Is PoS dead?

[newuser01]

Is it dead yet? no

Will it die? yes

PoS is flawed and is not good enough to secure the network. I really hope it dies off before enough people get scammed and lose interested in cryptocurrencies.

[1713570492]

1713570492

[devphp]

Will it die? yes

[Nullu]

I think PoS works conceptually, but the way it's designed has some flaws. A PoS v2 that could address those problems would be very interesting.

Would you care to expand?

Like I said, I fair bit of it went over my head, but I think the problem with PoW/PoS is that PoS changes the difficulty in ways that negatively impacts on PoW blocks. I believe Grain implemented fixes for this behavior, and other coins may have done so too, however I'm not really an expert on PoS so you'd have to ask a clued-up developer.

Also, when you think about it, an exchange holding a huge amount of PoS coins is going to stake the majority of stake blocks if they're not in cold storage, so they're essentially able to mine coins from the coins they have and sell them on. This is quite harmful to the price of PoS coins.

[wmcorless]

No, I think coins like Paccoin will show that it doesn't matter how you get your coins, the important thing, is they are useful and can be used in commerce.

[asdlolciterquit]

maybe PoS will die soon, but altcoin need to find a way to don't waste so much energy, like for example PoR (proof of research) of gridcoin

[cypherdoc]

PoS is dead???

try PoW is dead.. or atleast it will be lol

even etherum is changing to DPOS.. bitshares and nxt dont use the flawed version of proof of stake that the likes of peer coin use.. vitalik buterin even had a discussion with devs on the nxt forum and came to agreement that nxt does not suffer from the flaws that other proof of stake does.. he also agreed the same thing about bitshares.. is it so hard to believe that PoS technology can evolve?

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6990

i find the hubris in all of your comments to be astounding and quite naive.  Satoshi solved a fundamental problem in computer science, that of the Byzantine Generals Problem, which for the first time in the history of the internet allows for a decentralized network of computers (many of whom may be malicious) to come to a consensus agreement on what the true reality of a distributed ledger is. we have the smartest ppl in the world and many academicians at major universities acknowledging this feat. here we are 5.5 yrs into a heretofore successful implementation of the project and yet you continually diss his whole accomplishment as if you are somebody worth listening to.  how old are you btw and what credibility do you bring to the table except for "Vitalik said it, therefore it must be true"?

[newuser01]

PoS is dead???

try PoW is dead.. or atleast it will be lol

even etherum is changing to DPOS.. bitshares and nxt dont use the flawed version of proof of stake that the likes of peer coin use.. vitalik buterin even had a discussion with devs on the nxt forum and came to agreement that nxt does not suffer from the flaws that other proof of stake does.. he also agreed the same thing about bitshares.. is it so hard to believe that PoS technology can evolve?

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6990

i find the hubris in all of your comments to be astounding and quite naive.  Satoshi solved a fundamental problem in computer science, that of the Byzantine Generals Problem, which for the first time in the history of the internet allows for a decentralized network of computers (many of whom may be malicious) to come to a consensus agreement on what the true reality of a distributed ledger is. we have the smartest ppl in the world and many academicians at major universities acknowledging this feat. here we are 5.5 yrs into a heretofore successful implementation of the project and yet you continually diss his whole accomplishment as if you are somebody worth listening to.  how old are you btw and what credibility do you bring to the table except for "Vitalik said it, therefore it must be true"?

This needs to be bumped so that the newcomers will realize how important PoW actually is.

[SlipperySlope]

According to Coinmarketcap.com, 8 of the top 20 coins by market cap cannot be mined. I would say that Proof-of-Work has substantial competition from other proven mechanisms to secure the shared transaction ledger.

[cypherdoc]

According to Coinmarketcap.com, 8 of the top 20 coins by market cap cannot be mined. I would say that Proof-of-Work has substantial competition from other proven mechanisms to secure the shared transaction ledger.

how could you conclude that when all their share prices have been shrinking much faster than Bitcoin's, they have barely any consumer support, and they are all but a speck in comparative and absolute market cap?

[onchain.io]

vitalik buterin even had a discussion with devs on the nxt forum and came to agreement that nxt does not suffer from the flaws that other proof of stake does.. he also agreed the same thing about bitshares.. is it so hard to believe that PoS technology can evolve?

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=6990

That's not exactly what was said, or perhaps I'm mistaken. I think Vitalik mentioned that he would like to see code or a paper on the NXT solution (Economic Certainty) which is as far as I understand it a proposal at the moment.

There's some very clever stuff happening with NXT but at the moment there is also an air of mystery around potential solutions to the nothing at stake problem.

p.s. I hold NXT and BTC, nothing else.

[Rakitich]

Pretty much, no other system beynod POW has shown being worth it IMO.

[CoinHoarder]

I posted this on Litecoin forums yesterday. Instead of repeating myself I'll just paste the convo here.

There are several alternatives to PoW:

Transparent Forging as it is in Nxt.
Proof Of Scrypt 2.0 as it is in Blackcoin
Delegated Proof Of Scrypt as it is in Bitshares
Proof Of Importance as it is in NEM
Consensus as it is in Ripple
.... + others in development

Are these perfect solutions? Probably not.
Are these as secure as PoW? That is debatable.
Has anyone successfully attacked these PoW substitutions? No!!
Will there be more to come and will they be improved upon in the (near) future? Certainly
If they are secure and work as advertised are they a better solution to PoW? Yes, a million times yes.

It was scary enough to have Vericoin roll back their blockchain via a hard fork and NXT considering it (which if they lost 30% also they would have, I guarantee it).

Vericoin was an important lesson to all PoS coins in that they should be more careful, as to not storing a large percentage of the total money supply with one exchange or service. I think the recent Nxt scare will only reinforce that. Through community awareness campaigns the issues that got them into those messes in the first place can be avoided. Vericoin is also not Nxt and has never been as big as Nxt, comparing the two is akin to saying if Doge were to fork then Litecoin is vulnerable. There are only 26 million Vericoins and there are almost 1 billion Nxt coins, meaning that statistically it is much more unlikely for 30% of Nxt coins to be hacked or stolen. Simple mathematics..

Furthermore, judging a coin on a failed fork or roll back attempt is a bit prejudiced. Both Bitcoin and Litecoin have had somewhat close calls when it comes to forks. Litecoin had the anti ASIC fork movement and Bitcoin had the anti seized Silk Road coins movement. Both of these movements failed, but they still caused a lot of debate and garnered a lot of support for both sides. Judging Nxt for its failed roll back attempt is akin to judging Litecoin/Bitcoin for these failed forks.

Failed Bitcoin rollback: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=412041.0
Failed Litecoin fork: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=549572.0

None of them happened because community support wasn't there for any of them, believe it or not PoS consensus works much the same as PoW consensus. Except there is one big difference as with PoW consensus is determined by miners (which are becoming more centralized as ASICs proliferate), and with PoS consensus is determined by the owners of the coins. It is debatable which system is best, me saying PoS is better is only MY opinion. The way people act as if PoS is inferior to PoW is only THEIR opinion, however most people try to pass it off as fact which really annoys me. Sure, there are some drawbacks to allowing the coin holders to call the shots (as in PoS), but as PoW mining becomes more centralized there are also drawbacks to having a small conglomerate of industrial miners call the shots. For instance they could decide they aren't making enough on transaction fees and jack the costs up for transactions. That's only one example.

There are pros and cons to each consensus system, but I think it is unfair to say one is definitely better than the other and it is a fact. Especially when both systems are so new the potential drawbacks have yet to all surface. I guarantee there will be some issues with PoW as well as it becomes more centralized. I agree it is a good method for initial distribution, and lately I have been encouraging all PoS coins to distribute coins using PoW before switching to pure PoS, but we have yet to see PoW fully mature. ASICs have only been in existence for a year and a half, I would venture to say a lot is going to change in the next few years as mining goes from a hobby to more of an industrial undertaking that requires deep pockets or good connections to people in power within manufacturers.

[ChuckOne]

@CoinHoarder

Interesting. Thank you for cross-posting.

[mitchr4]

im curious of POS. Ive put a lot of money in Aerocoin, because it has some really strong devs. I think that PoS can work, but it takes a confident team to do it right. Take a look at Aero, id be curious to hear your opinions. it just got a nice review from the XC devs.

[giveBTCpls]

Well, take a look at the recent NXT incident. A hacker just shocked the entire community and went away with a shit ton of money. They tried to do a rollback.

[smoothie]

Well, take a look at the recent NXT incident. A hacker just shocked the entire community and went away with a shit ton of money. They tried to do a rollback.

they gave the option to do one.. they didnt just try and force it on people.. they allowed the community as a whole to come to a decision rather than the core devs just saying "this is whats going to happen". they handed over the choice to the community, which is how it should have been handled.. and by doing this they have proved that the integrity of the network is far more important to everyone involved than leaving 50m nxt in the hands of a malicious entity..

an entity who could very easily have used that 50m to complete fuck with every asset on the AE until no one dare touch any assets. he could have used it to entirely screw up the nxt <> btc market.. he could have dumped the crap out of the price or made it do loops so that no trader would buy nxt.. and with all this risk.. the consensus was to leave the network untouched and leave the 50m nxt in the hands of this malicious entity regardless of the risk that is involved with leaving such a large amount with someone who is obviously not trying to do any favors for nxt or its community...

how can this be seen as a bad thing??? the fact that the price has hardly even flinched shows how strong nxt really is.. the highest volume exchange for trading nxt is now multigateway.. the hack has made nxt even stronger by removing the majority of trade from a centralised solution to a decentralised one with out a single point of failure..

nxt did not just survive the hack.. it made nxt stronger, more resilient from hacks and showed the true integrity of the network and the integrity of the devs, they knew it was not their place to dictate what forgers should do and therefore handed the choice over to the community.

They surely created that option for people pretty quickly.

They should have done nothing and just stayed on the sidelines.

[ChuckOne]

They surely created that option for people pretty quickly.

They should have done nothing and just stayed on the sidelines.

Why?

Options are a good thing for sure, right?

[manfred]

this condensed nature is precisely the problem with POS.  as i understand it looking back in this thread, NXT is highly concentrated amongst it's early adopters which is the opposite of what you want.  i fail to see how this improves with time; in fact, it should only get worse the way that forging works.

the worse scenario can get much worse; as in going to zero.

Anything can go to zero, there is no insurance against that, only taxes can't

The argument of distribution in NXT is beaten to death already. You can think of NXT distribution as having 2 stages: Stage 1 - initial distribution to 73 people. Stage 2 - is ongoing and will take years to unfold. Original stakeholders have been selling for almost 9 months, otherwise where would all the coins on the market come from? They need to cash out, they won't hold forever, just like in Bitcoin early adopters cash out.

In the end, all currencies tend to follow Pareto Principle, where 80% of the coins end up in the hands of 20% people. That works in real life, there is no reason it will be different with crypto currencies.

Stage 1 initial distribution of 73 people is wrong. It is 73 anonymous accounts on bitcointalk forum and the entity
"BCNext"  (whoever that is could be the FED for all we know) controls 50 or more of those accounts and sent more than 90% of all the initial money to himself (they actively discouraged to sent large amounts).

This will be done by sending a small amount of BTC to my own address.  I bet most of you have just thought “I got the catch!”  Hold on, I don’t ask you to send thousand USD worth coins, a few satoshis is enough

He sent himself high amounts (max was 1BTC) to himself with the accounts created at the forum. As the initial distribution is according to satoshis sent, the guy sending a few satoshis still got millions of nxt.
Next stage is to buy heavy from the reaming early adaptors and get another couple% of coins, site effect price rise.  Now having full control of the price current "investors" ponzie participants jump when he says jump and duck when he says duck.
Its a scam it its purest form and fails miserable as money you can not stake and spend at the same time.
2 types of Nxt shills are either part of the scam or completely clueless.



Bitcoin is a intangible good, a commodity

"The price of any commodity tends to gravitate toward the production cost" -Satoshi

http://crypt.la/2014/01/06/satoshi-nakamoto-quotes/
.

It does not matter what Pos system is used for a Pos coin, they all are vulnerable to a social 51% attack.


In the case of nxt no attack is needed as its game set match from the start. Those Lithuanian guys who created nxt always had full control.
.

[cypherdoc]

They surely created that option for people pretty quickly.

They should have done nothing and just stayed on the sidelines.

Why?

Options are a good thing for sure, right?

no, the right way to release a patch like that would be to first get a community consensus so that any which move they made would be accepted by the community in general.  assuming the consensus was no rollback, then the core devs would not have wasted time coding the patch and would've been perceived as being more sensitive to the entire community's wishes as opposed to being manipulable to political and economic interests of key members only like Bter.  now, i question the motives of the core devs and whether or not they truly understand the principles of a community and free market currency.  this also introduces confusion as to what the hell they will do the NXT-time an issue like this arises.  having a "vote" like this is not the same as gaining consensus.

[CoinHoarder]

It does not matter what Pos system is used for a Pos coin, they all are vulnerable to a social 51% attack.


In the case of nxt no attack is needed as its game set match from the start. Those Lithuanian guys who created nxt always had full control.

...........

It doesn't matter what PoW algorithm is used for PoW coins, they are all vulnerable to 51% attacks.

In the case of Bitcoin and Litecoin, no attack is needed as it was game set match from the start. Those ASIC manufacturers, governments, or banksters with very deep pockets always had full control.

......................

It is getting hard to tell FUD from honest opinion. So many PoS FUDsters...