Is PoS dead?

[darkota]

Proof of Stake coins have many issues here are some:

PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything and there will be an endless supply of PoS coins because one created today does not have a significant advantage over on created tomorrow, next week, next month.......
What currently is happening is new coins are created with PoW, mined for a week until a fixed number is reached and then change to PoS and then you can claim your stake at buying xyz coin. The only advantage a coin released today has over on made sometime in the future is; somebody already bought into it. The advantage quickly disappears if the new coin has a better catch phrase a flashier webpage or bigger marketing capital....
There is no end in sight for stake claimed coins and all promising x % return if you know a bit of programming you will have your very one coin too and everyone can buy into your claim based coin completely deluding the marked.
Its a barrel without bottom and once it clicks by the herd run for the hills if you own a stake.  
  
With a PoS the richer get richer. Nothing more to add to it that's just how it is.

To 51% PoS is dead easy:
You start aggressively buying until you have 51% of a PoS coin, and then sell off your coins so that you no longer have 51%, but your history of having once owned 51% makes it possible to attack the network at any time in the future at next to no cost only some computing resources (and thus electricity costs, etc.).
As you once had a 51% stake, you can build a better blockchain than the other 49% can, starting from the point where you owned 51%. You develop this blockchain in secret, after you have sold off your coins (and profiting from it); and then release your secret blockchain to the world, and nodes will pick it up because it carries more stake than the 49% blockchain.  Now not only do you have your profit from the original sales of the coin, you have your 51% back (to the extent that it's worth anything).  Not all coins need to be in one address, in fact, doing so would prevent the attack in most PoS implementations.

 
PoW is backed by energy. There is no better backing than energy because everyone needs it, wants it and i will never have any problem selling it. To create a PoW coin you need x amount of energy and you can not cheat. The best you can hope for is to have  a more efficient miner. Because the energy has been spent, the coin has a base value (many other things on top) and is a kind of a storage medium.

Agreed - PoS is dead, the economic model is crap as people who got in early will just stake and sell at a constant rate while their mean wealth does not change. Not to mention exchanges who likely stake their coins and drive the prices further down as they sell. For the people that have huge farms, a coin that goes PoW --> PoS is even worse. Most coins that are PoS usually have very bad distribution ratio's because of this.

I would say in the next 2-3 months most PoS coins will start to die off.

Wow, very very good points raised there...and to think I was semi interested in NXT. Now that interest is out the window...PoS coins are indeed crap.

[visual111]

The energy usage is too big of an issue with PoW coins. We're in/moving toward an era of conserving resources and mining doesn't support this

[toknormal]

Wow, very very good points raised there...and to think I was semi interested in NXT. Now that interest is out the window...PoS coins are indeed crap.

Well that seals it. If darkota's not interested I definitely am  

This thread is basically a load of b.s. written by posters who are clueless about both the analytics of monetary systems in general and - so it seems - crypto currencies in particular.

Firstly, if the argument is that POS is threatened by monopolies of buying power, then POW is even worse because it is threatened by monopolies of BOTH buying AND mining power.

Secondly, the POS implementation that NXT has is about as secure as any coin can get against 51%'s (in fact 90%) because of its ability to transparently disable the staking capacity of holdings which are not actively generating blocks. So that shows you how much of a clue darkota, in hist post above, has about NXT.

Thirdly, sure, active stakers earn interest, but if that's your best argument against an algo then I'm kind of about as impressed as if you'd told me that you didn't like it because it sounded too much like you had to have attended a barbecue

Fourthly, the criticism that POS coins aren't backed by anything ? Are you serious ? This is crypto. Try to convince an ordinary Joe that POW represents "backing" and you won't need to work for the rest of your life. ALL crypto is base money - not proxy money. Base money, by definition, does not have any backing.

[mavromixalakis]

You must be on drugs if you believe that PoW is better than PoS...

The whole point of bitcoin and altcoins is to create better payment protocols, faster transactions, no need for intermediaries and banks to process your transactions during weekdays, create smart contracts, transfer your funds and assets world wide instantly through the net with the maximum security.

And most importantly...wait for it...to create private money and security from any governmental manipulation...

Those are the fundamentals. Once you realise that you will all realise that the solution is Bitshares X (fast transactions and no way any government can ever take control of your assets) and I3 DACS. The sooner you realise that the better you will be in the future...

Stop wasting your time with theoretical conversations and welcome to the future of Bitshares!

[mczarnek]

Yeah.. POS is dead.. probably the reason why we are seeing Nxt clones emerging left and right.

Seriously though.. this is why I think Nxt will suceed: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8uhdshu9epGRrQHBaloGc4itdvuAHZDAUtNDjOhz-8/edit?usp=sharing

It uses at least 8000 times less energy to power the network and transaction fees will be able to be 2000+ times smaller once Bitcoin stops printing more money and inflating the supply in the mean time.

Regarding the nothing at stake problem, Nxt solves it by making it computationally tricky to figure out how to fake a fork, as well as some other tricks.

Anyway, you may think this for now.. but 10 years from now, I suspect you'll be wishing you'd gotten in on Nxt while you could get it for only 6 cents each.

[ShroomsKit_Disgrace]

You must be on drugs if you believe that PoW is better than PoS...

The whole point of bitcoin and altcoins is to create better payment protocols, faster transactions, no need for intermediaries and banks to process your transactions during weekdays, create smart contracts, transfer your funds and assets world wide instantly through the net with the maximum security.

And most importantly...wait for it...to create private money and security from any governmental manipulation...

Those are the fundamentals. Once you realise that you will all realise that the solution is Bitshares X (fast transactions and no way any government can ever take control of your assets) and I3 DACS. The sooner you realise that the better you will be in the future...

Stop wasting your time with theoretical conversations and welcome to the future of Bitshares!

Your post begins so well!!  

But it ends so bad!!  

[mavromixalakis]

Your post begins so well!!  Smiley

But it ends so bad!!  Sad

Why? Because I believe in Bitshares? In my view DPOS is much better than POS... I also believe that NXT has huge potential if this is what bothers you with my post... To me only Bitcoin doen't make any sense...

The only PoW coins that should exist and make sense are those that actually do something...XPM, Curecoin and any other coin doing some valuable protein folding, even solarcoin maybe...but bitcoin?? Please...move on people...

[coinsolidation]

Lol, the only thing i ever mined for about 2 weeks where some Ripples, not because i wanted to support the scam but i wanted to provide some computing power for cancer research.

Should I tell you how I know that's a lie?

[fudbuster]

While the free give away POS coins don't seem to be going anywhere, I can help but think that POW will become more and more frowned upon as it starts to leave a larger and larger carbon footprint.

However, POS certainly has it issues. I am excited about the up and coming POI (Proof of Importance) that NEM will be introducing.

[digitalindustry]

Proof of Stake coins have many issues here are some:

PoS is not backed by anything other than the belief there are worth anything and there will be an endless supply of PoS coins because one created today does not have a significant advantage over on created tomorrow, next week, next month.......
What currently is happening is new coins are created with PoW, mined for a week until a fixed number is reached and then change to PoS and then you can claim your stake at buying xyz coin. The only advantage a coin released today has over on made sometime in the future is; somebody already bought into it. The advantage quickly disappears if the new coin has a better catch phrase a flashier webpage or bigger marketing capital....
There is no end in sight for stake claimed coins and all promising x % return if you know a bit of programming you will have your very one coin too and everyone can buy into your claim based coin completely deluding the marked.
Its a barrel without bottom and once it clicks by the herd run for the hills if you own a stake.  
  
With a PoS the richer get richer. Nothing more to add to it that's just how it is.

PoS is a technological dead end. Once the coin is released the only thing to do is "claim your stake" no research, no new capital outside the buy in, no evolving industry...

To 51% PoS is dead easy:
You start aggressively buying until you have 51% of a PoS coin, and then sell off your coins so that you no longer have 51%, but your history of having once owned 51% makes it possible to attack the network at any time in the future at next to no cost only some computing resources (and thus electricity costs, etc.).
As you once had a 51% stake, you can build a better blockchain than the other 49% can, starting from the point where you owned 51%. You develop this blockchain in secret, after you have sold off your coins (and profiting from it); and then release your secret blockchain to the world, and nodes will pick it up because it carries more stake than the 49% blockchain.  Now not only do you have your profit from the original sales of the coin, you have your 51% back (to the extent that it's worth anything).  Not all coins need to be in one address, in fact, doing so would prevent the attack in most PoS implementations.
There is no way of knowing if any PoS chain is already "dead", as it could have been done at any-time in the past.

  
PoW is backed by energy. There is no better backing than energy because everyone needs it, wants it and i will never have any problem selling it. To create a PoW coin you need x amount of energy and you can not cheat. The best you can hope for is to have  a more efficient miner. Because the energy has been spent, the coin has a base value (many other things on top) and is a kind of a storage medium.

yes i can confirm that for you if you like, PoS as a concept inside a crypto design is DOA, to all intents and purposes.

however "PoS" in the form of p2p lending is is probably the future of a new economic model, that same system and an evolution of crowd funding.

- Re "NXT" please take two things into account:

1. there will always be some suckers
2. you can't know how much is just the original holder sloshing it back and forth amongst themselves (because they IPO'd it to themselves) , i like to tell childlike and naive people that if it literally cost nothing and they own it all, what is the cost to trade it back and forth? - so you can't know how many people have been suckered by these systems and you can't know how much is just "Wall st" style volume trading.*

I mean thats one of the oldest Rat hole "Wall St " scams in the history of being taken for a ride, and people are (seemingly) ha ha ; ) lining up for it. (lots of new accounts support IPOs and PoS systems)

of course this could happen to a degree with ANY crypto, PoW installs a certain cost of course and also secures a certain amount of distribution.

so of course just like "Ripple" et al , and the rest you can ignore them or you can not ignore them it really doesn't matter, the result is going to be the same.

[gjhiggins]

I'd like to see how someone can agressively buy 51% of the coins
It'll be much cheaper to buy 500m of equipment to get 51% of the Bitcoin hashrate.

I see from the posts that a number of people haven't cottoned on to the core issue.

Step one: with borrowed money, buy 40% of the coins.
Step two: sell all the coins, pay back the loan, banking any profits or covering any loss.
Step three: mount continuous, free, penalty-less attacks for evermore.

51% is the minimum for a statistically-guaranteed success. At 40% success isn't guaranteed but those are terrific odds when you can mount a permanent attack basically for free. The odds get more forbidding at 20%, obviously --- but when paired with infinite free attacks, that's still quite tempting, kinda like a CDO Tier3.

That's my understanding of the vulnerability anyway --- I am open to correction.

Cheers,

Graham


Edit: explicitly added openness to correction

[devphp]

I'd like to see how someone can agressively buy 51% of the coins
It'll be much cheaper to buy 500m of equipment to get 51% of the Bitcoin hashrate.

I see from the posts that a number of people haven't cottoned on to the core issue.

Step one: with borrowed money, buy 40% of the coins.
Step two: sell all the coins, pay back the loan, banking any profits or covering any loss.
Step three: mount continuous, free, penalty-less attacks for evermore.

51% is the minimum for a statistically-guaranteed success. At 40% success isn't guaranteed but those are terrific odds when you can mount a permanent attack basically for free. The odds get more forbidding at 20%, obviously --- but when paired with infinite free attacks, that's still quite tempting.

That's my understanding of the vulnerability anyway.

Cheers,

Graham

You can't borrow money to buy 40% of a PoS crypto, at least an established PoS crypto like NXT, it would be in the range of hundreds of billions (that's with nine 0's) of $$$. Buying 1% of NXTs drives price 25% in geometrical progression. Please do your maths homework first.

On the other hand it only takes hundreds of millions of $$$ to hijack a PoW crypto like Bitcoin, not to mention smaller ones.

Which adds up to, it takes on the range of 1000 times more money to attack a PoS crypto than a PoW crypto.

[ShroomsKit_Disgrace]

I'd like to see how someone can agressively buy 51% of the coins
It'll be much cheaper to buy 500m of equipment to get 51% of the Bitcoin hashrate.

Dreams

Graham

Man, as he said before, we dare you, we DOUBLE-DARE YOU to perform this attack to NXT.

Thanks.

[Tobo]

The purpose of PoW and PoS is to provide a distributed consensus for crypto currencies. It does not matter if it is backed by something or not as long as it the consensus works. The cost and risk to do it is a totally different issue but it is a important issue. high cost may make it prohibitive and high risk (e.g. the 51%+ attack issue) may make it fail.

[ChuckOne]

I'd like to see how someone can agressively buy 51% of the coins
It'll be much cheaper to buy 500m of equipment to get 51% of the Bitcoin hashrate.

That is actually the most important question here.

I requested some data on this somewhere here on this forum but never received answer.

What are the costs of performing a 51%-attack in
1) PoW?
2) PoS?

Anyone?

[coinsolidation]

What are the costs of performing a 51%-attack in
1) PoW?
2) PoS?

Anyone?

1) Hundreds of Millions.
2) Theoretically nothing, if you discount checkpoints. with checkpoints it's hard.

But then there's the social 51% attack where a tiny majority hold a massive percentage of the currency. When this occurs the market is open to extensive manipulation for the benefit of the few, as with real world economics (the 1%).

NXT is a good example of the social 51% attack, the top 33 accounts hold 51% between them. The top 50 accounts hold 61.2%. I'm quite sure the top 1% of accounts (400 ish) hold almost everything, with the other 99% playing with spare change. source

I think that's why you see so many NXT shills trying to ram it down everybodies throats on this forum.

[Voluntold]

I'd love to see someone attempt a 51% attack.  Nxt's price would go sooo high, I'd be rich.

[Tobo]

I'd love to see someone attempt a 51% attack.  Nxt's price would go sooo high, I'd be rich.

It happened before but no one cares. - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=327767.0

[ChuckOne]

So, 51% is not a problem. Great.

Let us build PoS coins because they are greener.

[Tobo]

So, 51% is not a problem. Great.
Let us build PoS coins because they are greener.

It is not a problem for the bitcoin establishment. But it is a problem for bitcoin. But at this time, bitocoin is controlled by the established.