Why i prefer POW over POS

[balu2]

These days it is the hype of pos-coins. I thought a thread is needed to show the advantages of POW over POS.
I prefer pow-coins for a number of reasons. Those are:

-POW gives everybody the opportunity to get in on a coin through mining. POS on the other hand favours early adopters. People who come late to the show have a serious disadvantage.
-For the above reason POW-coins are more widely distributed over a longer period of time.
-POW means the creation of coins is decetralized where many POS-coins are mined out within days and weeks which makes flashmining an even greater issue
-POW is time-tested
-POS means high inflation. Of course it is nice to get 100% interest on an asiacoin but that also means the coin is not scarce so its value will after the initial pumps probably decline while the high pos-interests last.

These are the main reasons i prefer POW-coins with a good reward-decrease over highly inflationary, even more experimental pos-coins as an investement.

Please stop thinking pos would be superior to pow which is not the case. POS just makes the rich ones richer while excluding people with no coins or not so much money as well as miners from accumulating the coin. POS-coins are more like exclusive circles of traders while pow is open for everybody even later in the game.

So really, i don't buy into the hype. I think anything over 2% or 3% interest a year is not a good investement even if i would be the one harvesting those interests.
Also decentralized moneycreation over a longer timeperiod is to prefer from an ethical standpoint over a flashming or ipo in the beginning and heavy whale-monopoly thereafter.

love to hear your opinion on the pow vs pos discussion.

[brkb]

Great post!

[drawingthesun]

-POS means high inflation. Of course it is nice to get 100% interest on an asiacoin but that also means the coin is not scarce so its value will after the initial pumps probably decline while the high pos-interests last.

Is this always the case? I believe that Nxt has very low inflation.

[Vivisector999]

The reasons the POS coins are so popular right now as it is the only way devs have of fighting the incoming ASIC's.  Soon the majority of coins will be X11 or some other algorithm, as there will no longer be coins spread out for the everyday miners, as the people that purchase the $10,000+ machines will be the ones owning all the coins, while the average person will be forced to turn off their scrypt miners, much like they have been forced out of the SHA-256 mining game.  

If you notice all the POS coins are hitting hard before the big ASIC's come out.  Once they are shipping, the POS coins will probably slow to a halt as another trend picks up.  

Also POS coins are very popular with the tree huggers, as there is no constant waste of huge amounts of power being drained to keep the game going.  This is the reason it was created in the first place.  The trying an idea to stay 1 step ahead of the ASIC's was just a secondary side effect.

I myself have some Gridseeds to play around with, so I won't say I am an ASIC hater, but I do know the effect scrypt going ASIC's will do in the long run, look at BTC.  Going from a widely distributed model to one where soon only big businesses will be able to make any profit from mining.  The exact thing BTC was trying to fight all along.  

[drawingthesun]

As with all coins, the distribution method is always the sour grapes part.

Many proof of work coins are hyper mined in their first days and some proof of stake coins have almost their entire coin distribution owned by a small select few. Even NEM tries to fix this by having 4,000 people share the adoption of the genesis block, but really, 4,000 people is very low. Perhaps if a proof of stake coin such as Nxt instead had it's original distribution made over a million verified people it might work.

In the long run if proof of stake can work it will beat proof of work, especially the proof of work that burns energy without any other gain than security of the network. If Bitcoin were to become the de facto world currency it's calculated that several percent of humanities energy usage would be Bitcoin mining. Basically that is a disaster.

The trick is initial distribution and coin release schedule.

If something like Nxt was created where millions of people had a part in the genesis block it might actually take off.

[tokyoghetto]

-people late to the game can just buy PoS coins on an open exchange.

-PoW coins can be flashmined, and large mining farms continue to get the large share of coins in the future.

-PoW can also be high-inflation during the initial stages of distribution. BTC had 100 percent inflation its first year.

-Not all PoS coins have high inflation (i.e. Blackcoin), and coins based on NVCS (Novacoin, Hobonickels) will actually lower the interest rate as more coins are staked. High interest also protects early adopters against adverse price movements and rewards the risk they take vs zombie coins like Worldcoin where plenty of bagholders can only pray the price goes up.

-high interest in PoS coins also results in volatility, which is desirable by traders and investors. Most of the altcoins are being used for speculation. If you really want to make real world purchases, use bitcoin.

-this is a free-market and a zero-sum game. Quit thinking about fairness, capitalism doesn't work that way. Those that put more into it, get more out of it. It works that way with PoW, PoS and Pos/PoW hybrids.

[Thread7]

I disagree with several of balu2's points:

-POW gives everybody the opportunity to get in on a coin through mining. POS on the other hand favours early adopters. People who come late to the show have a serious disadvantage.

I think just the oppposite - Those with the biggest and best mining equipment (ASICS, gridseed, graphics cards, or whatever) get a greater percentage of POW coins.

-POW means the creation of coins is decentralized where many POS-coins are mined out within days and weeks which makes flashmining an even greater issue
-POW is time-tested

I agree here.

Also, as said by others - POW uses up a lot of energy.  POS is superior in this respect. 
The other argument I've heard is that POS usually means more centralization.  POW tends to be very decentralized.  I'm not sure that is necessarily a bad thing.

[romerun]

I'm cool with BTC POW as it earned its place, but other POW clones are pretty much trying to do the same thing, we'd be ended up with many different flavors of ASIC. One unavoidable nature of POW is it leads to mining centralization pool, whereas in POS, users have to put their coins as the stake thereby having to mine on their own.

In POS, the more spread of coins, the better. IPO POS coins such as next, or coins that transform to 100% POS too soon such as dark, is bad, as it screams the sense of unfairness and centralization.

[sbux]

If POS is that good then Bitcoin will eventually switch to POS. But my main concern is security of POS, I'm not sure how well it was tested with real life attacks.

[Rofo]

People like PoS because it's easier to corner the current supply when there are very few coins added daily. This makes it easier after buying low to run up the price and dump for profit. How secure are PoS coins that offer near zero incentive to stake? You don't need 51% of coins in existence, only 51% (approx., some argue much, much less) currently staked..

[Conqueror]

These days it is the hype of pos-coins. I thought a thread is needed to show the advantages of POW over POS.
I prefer pow-coins for a number of reasons. Those are:

-POW gives everybody the opportunity to get in on a coin through mining. POS on the other hand favours early adopters. People who come late to the show have a serious disadvantage.
-For the above reason POW-coins are more widely distributed over a longer period of time.
-POW means the creation of coins is decetralized where many POS-coins are mined out within days and weeks which makes flashmining an even greater issue
-POW is time-tested
-POS means high inflation. Of course it is nice to get 100% interest on an asiacoin but that also means the coin is not scarce so its value will after the initial pumps probably decline while the high pos-interests last.

These are the main reasons i prefer POW-coins with a good reward-decrease over highly inflationary, even more experimental pos-coins as an investement.

Please stop thinking pos would be superior to pow which is not the case. POS just makes the rich ones richer while excluding people with no coins or not so much money as well as miners from accumulating the coin. POS-coins are more like exclusive circles of traders while pow is open for everybody even later in the game.

So really, i don't buy into the hype. I think anything over 2% or 3% interest a year is not a good investement even if i would be the one harvesting those interests.
Also decentralized moneycreation over a longer timeperiod is to prefer from an ethical standpoint over a flashming or ipo in the beginning and heavy whale-monopoly thereafter.

love to hear your opinion on the pow vs pos discussion.

Good points

[LeChatNoir]

-POW gives everybody the opportunity to get in on a coin through mining. POS on the other hand favours early adopters. People who come late to the show have a serious disadvantage.
Being able to mine efficently today has high costs. With PoW you pay the hardware to get the coins, with PoS you directly pay for the coins.

-For the above reason POW-coins are more widely distributed over a longer period of time.
Distribution is proportional to the age of the coin and other factors, it has anything to do with PoS or PoW, Bitcoin cannot be considered well distributed at all, it's more distributed then new altcoins only because it's older.

-POW means the creation of coins is decetralized where many POS-coins are mined out within days and weeks which makes flashmining an even greater issue
Consider a proof of stake 100% premined and distributed via IPO when launched. Now take all the cash of the IPO and litterally burn it. Distribution fairness is now similar to a PoW. Smart no?

-POW is time-tested
PoS will be time tested too in one year or two.

-POS means high inflation. Of course it is nice to get 100% interest on an asiacoin but that also means the coin is not scarce so its value will after the initial pumps probably decline while the high pos-interests last.
NXT has 0% against 11% yearly inflation of Bitcoin

[lionheart78]

These days it is the hype of pos-coins. I thought a thread is needed to show the advantages of POW over POS.
I prefer pow-coins for a number of reasons. Those are:

-POW gives everybody the opportunity to get in on a coin through mining. POS on the other hand favours early adopters. People who come late to the show have a serious disadvantage.
-For the above reason POW-coins are more widely distributed over a longer period of time.
-POW means the creation of coins is decetralized where many POS-coins are mined out within days and weeks which makes flashmining an even greater issue
-POW is time-tested
-POS means high inflation. Of course it is nice to get 100% interest on an asiacoin but that also means the coin is not scarce so its value will after the initial pumps probably decline while the high pos-interests last.

These are the main reasons i prefer POW-coins with a good reward-decrease over highly inflationary, even more experimental pos-coins as an investement.

Please stop thinking pos would be superior to pow which is not the case. POS just makes the rich ones richer while excluding people with no coins or not so much money as well as miners from accumulating the coin. POS-coins are more like exclusive circles of traders while pow is open for everybody even later in the game.

So really, i don't buy into the hype. I think anything over 2% or 3% interest a year is not a good investement even if i would be the one harvesting those interests.
Also decentralized moneycreation over a longer timeperiod is to prefer from an ethical standpoint over a flashming or ipo in the beginning and heavy whale-monopoly thereafter.

love to hear your opinion on the pow vs pos discussion.

Good points

i like pow coz i have a farming rig << well that is a better point

edit: anyway both  are in experimental stage ea has their own advantages and disadvantages and ea have their own community / fan
like not all people have hash power or the ability to buy equipment for mining and cpu is almost obsolete to use cept for some coins that is only intended for cpu mining.

[Acidyo]

-POW gives everybody the opportunity to get in on a coin through mining.

Wrong. Many who are daytrading don't even have the hardware to mine a single bit, what they do is gamble with the prices and chances to gai more BTC than they started out with by investing in new altcoins that they think may or may not take off. These are the people that lose a lot of money on a day to day basis to people who have the ability to mine with a lot of hardware and dump the coins that most of the time don't make it anywhere and investors are stuck holding a lot of dead coins.

[doremi]

POS is the salvation of POW
POW is just a sitting duck even with BTC
look at ripple progresssion,step by step it will take over BTC if you not even realized that the wasting of power resources is a very big trouble of POW,i don`t like ripple actually due to its centralize and this only bring to 1 conclution....> 100% premined POS will take over both BTC and ripple..the only question is: what is the best and fair distribution to start with?

[DubFX]

POW<POS if you care about our planet not beign destroyed becouse of digital money and selfishness.

[counter]

Excellent discussion, that has answered many questions I've had for a while now.  It is nice to see all your perspectives on the issue.  I''m thinking a POW/POS method is a good idea and just needs to be tweaked in order to find balance.  Nothing is going to be perfect but a coin that is prepared for the worst is a good goal I'd say.

[Momimaus]

The only reason why someone prefers POW is that he bought expensive mining hardware and his ROI is dropping to nowhere.

[vrm86]

Nowadays, to be successfull in PoW mining you have to be priviliged in several ways:

- have access to 'free' (usually means stolen) energy
- live in a country with low-taxed offshore deliveries or got ASIC manufacturer in your neighbourhood
- win in 'pre-order' gambling game

To get in PoS minting you just have to purchase BTC. Of course you have to deal with market swings, but nobody says that crypto-business is risk-free.
Early adopters of PoS cryptos had their chance to dump their coins when price went up for the first period of time, or patiently wait and risk. It's the same as dealing with any other algo new released currencies.

So IMO this is the point:

The only reason why someone prefers POW is that he bought expensive mining hardware and his ROI is dropping to nowhere.

[voileipa]

I would like to hear arguments whether POS is more/less safe than POW.