Is PoS dead?

[ChuckOne]

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.

Sure, "having a vote" is not the same as "gaining consensus". But "voting" is the same and this is what people did.

And this was even better than voting on some forum thread on nxtforum or somewhere where Sybil attacks were possible. It was voting directly on the trustless blockchain.

Maybe, I am wrong but I would appreciate it if you could elaborate more on your thoughts and take into account what I wrote.

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[User705]

The easiest path to attack bitcoin under the current PoW system is actually easier then building many asics or even getting a few swat teams to take over the pools.  It's simple.  Start two or three pools and pay slightly more then all the other pools.  Since government has the printing press they can subsidize the extra bitcoins in such pools essentially forever and in an unlimited fashion.  Most miners would have a clear economic incentive to join those pools and likely will.  And just like that they would control the majority of the hash rate.  They might already control that since no one knows who runs ghash.io and/or discuss fish?  That's tinfoil hat obviously and PoS would not be immune to that either since again with an unlimited printing press 51% of any PoS currency can simply be bought up.

[NWO]

Both pow and pos have serious flaws. Neither is immune.

[tinof]

Both pow and pos have serious flaws. Neither is immune.

Bitcoin is PoW and still alive for longer than 4 years without major flaw.

[devphp]

The easiest path to attack bitcoin under the current PoW system is actually easier then building many asics or even getting a few swat teams to take over the pools.  It's simple.  Start two or three pools and pay slightly more then all the other pools.  Since government has the printing press they can subsidize the extra bitcoins in such pools essentially forever and in an unlimited fashion.  Most miners would have a clear economic incentive to join those pools and likely will.  And just like that they would control the majority of the hash rate.  They might already control that since no one knows who runs ghash.io and/or discuss fish?  That's tinfoil hat obviously and PoS would not be immune to that either since again with an unlimited printing press 51% of any PoS currency can simply be bought up.

It will take at least two orders of magnitude ($500 mln vs $50 bln) more funds to "simply buy up" 51% of an established PoS crypto like NXT than buying up hashrate or subsidizing Bitcoin pools. Buying up 1% (10 mln) of available supply of NXT drives price 25% higher each time. Before there is a chance this could happen, Transparent Forging becomes implemented, then buying up 90+% of the coin supply will simply be impossible as in never. Now tell me which is more secure.

[manfred]

As the recent hack has proven if the hacker would have been malicious nxt would be dead at next to no cost at all.

The problem with PoS coins is that they kill each other by endless diluting with the arrival of better next generation coins   This is an ongoing process, no end in sight. 2nd gen is already outdated
With Bitcoin there is also lots of technological improvements made continuously, but its mainly on the hardware side so the coin stays the same instead of starting a new superior chain like in the PoS system. Its a bit akin to serial vs parallel.

[devphp]

As the recent hack has proven if the hacker would have been malicious nxt would be dead at next to no cost at all.

Someone already said that, you guys keep repeating the same things over and over.

of course it's quite possible if Bter didn't do it, the price of all NXT on the market would be 0.

It would stay depressed at 4-5k satoshi for 2-3 months if he chose to sell in equal portions (1m each day), that's how long it would take for the market to absorb 50M volume. If he chose to sell all in one go, it would go to 100-200 satoshi for a few hours, buying 50m NXTs at 500 satoshi takes only 250 Bitcoins, that's about daily volume of NXT trading. So all the 50m would be quickly bought within 1 day, that's rough calculations, give or take a few hours. Gradual selling over 2-3 months would hurt more because it'd be more prolonged bleeding, but not dramatic either.

Hacker can't control NXT network with 5% of the coins. The only thing he could do is what is quoted above.

[XbladeX]

...
The problem with PoS coins is that they kill each other by endless diluting with the arrival of better next generation coins ....

POW coins had same part of cloning - people have short memory.
LTC MEGA VTC DOGE (LOTTO LEAF Flappy no one remember that shit - and BTC clones ? ) + + + mining coins was fun till they were profitable...
Now profitable is POS pump dump forget in 90% of cases because is most easier way to do money.
Greed will always force people to clone good coins no matter is POW POS IPO POI...

[instacalm]

manfred, cypherdoc, you seem to me like intrusive salesmen for PoW, who I really do not wish to see knocking on my door blablaing the same sales buzzwords over and over again. Come on dudes... : )

[cypherdoc]

As the recent hack has proven if the hacker would have been malicious nxt would be dead at next to no cost at all.

Someone already said that, you guys keep repeating the same things over and over.

of course it's quite possible if Bter didn't do it, the price of all NXT on the market would be 0.

It would stay depressed at 4-5k satoshi for 2-3 months if he chose to sell in equal portions (1m each day), that's how long it would take for the market to absorb 50M volume. If he chose to sell all in one go, it would go to 100-200 satoshi for a few hours, buying 50m NXTs at 500 satoshi takes only 250 Bitcoins, that's about daily volume of NXT trading. So all the 50m would be quickly bought within 1 day, that's rough calculations, give or take a few hours. Gradual selling over 2-3 months would hurt more because it'd be more prolonged bleeding, but not dramatic either.

Hacker can't control NXT network with 5% of the coins. The only thing he could do is what is quoted above.

quoting your opinion proves nothing.  we just saw 45M NXT bought for a measly 200BTC.  just goes to show you how badly the hacker wanted BTC instead of NXT.  yet he still hold 8M NXT to screw around the NXT network.  can one short NXT yet?

trying to physically buy up a crapload of asic mining equipment, build a secret datacenter equivalent to all the current mines out there, channel enough water and electricity to such a secret facility, hire the manpower and construction machinery to build out said center, hire the expertise to implement such hardware is NXT to impossible at this point.  we see asic chip makers pushing the 14nm chip frontier while Intel is still on 28nm.  and yet the boogeyman gubmint is supposed to be the bleeding edge?  no, i'll take the private, open source sector anytime.

[XbladeX]

...just goes to show you how badly the hacker wanted BTC instead of NXT...

So you think that he should sell NXT for ?hmm  NXT ?

[C64_4EVA]

I'd argue the exact opposite and that is POW is dead (except for Bitcoin) and POS is the future. Look at all the innovation with POS coins: NXT, NEM, Crypti. Where is the innovation with POW? Litecoin? Darkcoin? Titcoin?

Does anyone still believe that purchasing a machine for thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to mine POW coins is still profitable?

Furthermore, as energy costs and hashrates continue to rise, fewer and fewer people will get involved with POW mining.

[devphp]

quoting your opinion proves nothing. 

Same can be said about PoW crowd opinion

we just saw 45M NXT bought for a measly 200BTC.  just goes to show you how badly the hacker wanted BTC instead of NXT.  yet he still hold 8M NXT to screw around the NXT network.  can one short NXT yet?

trying to physically buy up a crapload of asic mining equipment, build a secret datacenter equivalent to all the current mines out there, channel enough water and electricity to such a secret facility, hire the manpower and construction machinery to build out said center, hire the expertise to implement such hardware is NXT to impossible at this point.  we see asic chip makers pushing the 14nm chip frontier while Intel is still on 28nm.  and yet the boogeyman gubmint is supposed to be the bleeding edge?  no, i'll take the private, open source sector anytime.

Hacker was under pressure and had to settle for less money. Nobody argues that BTC is more liquid and easier to get away with, however hacker said that he believes in NXT and had no intention to sell it quickly

I don't believe you can short NXT, there is an asset at NXT Asset exchange that someone created that can be used to short but with very large limitations and in small amounts, it's more of a scientific interest to that asset issuer, not any meaningful tool.

The process to buy 51% of NXT would be even more cumbersome than what you just described. There is simply no place where you could find that much NXT supply to begin with.

[cypherdoc]

Both pow and pos have serious flaws. Neither is immune.

Bitcoin is PoW and still alive for longer than 4 years without major flaw.

there is major flaws with pow. It's like cars... We have cars that are majorly adopted but they are run on petrol which is a major flaw in the concept of cars due the inefficiency of the engines and fuel source for the engine. Everyone knows electric cars are more efficient and solve the major flaw previously mentioned how ever they are only a fraction of the total automotive industry and not very popular regardless of being superior technology because the infrastructure isn't in place to allow mass adoption.

Not only that but people  won't actually try the technology because they are complacent with what they already use because in their eyes it is "good enough" and will not realise the deficiencies in what they currently use until the later more advanced and efficient technology becomes further adopted at which point they are part of the mainstream adoption and missed the "early adopter" status of that technology.

There will always be people who deny that the more efficient and advanced technology is better and fight against it due to vested interest which is what we see today with those who have a vested interest in bitcoin and those who have a public persona in the btc space.

The same concept can be applied very well to 1st and second gen crypto..

Just because bitcoin is fully functional and gaining huge adoption, it doesn't mean it's the superior technology.. Eventually  infrastructure will be built for the superior tech and people will start to see the it is superior and it will gain adoption...

The question is... At what point will people see this and move from old inefficient tech to the New more efficient and advanced tech? And where in this adoption curve do you fit in?

how old are you again?

POS has everything to prove while POW has nothing to prove at this point.  Bitcoin's been at it for over 5.5 yrs w/o a significant protocol incident. certainly not one that's hurt it.  that's a helluva long time.  if gubmint were to attempt to attack it, they should've done it years ago.  now, it's out of reach and still accelerating to the upside.  sure, you can worry about it all you want and present all sorts of counter arguments, but the fact is, there has never been a major protocol hack and the price is up tens of thousand of percent.

life is full of doom sayers and pump and dumpers.  some ppl just can't accept the truth even after it's stared them in the face for years.

[othe]

As the recent hack has proven if the hacker would have been malicious nxt would be dead at next to no cost at all.

Someone already said that, you guys keep repeating the same things over and over.

of course it's quite possible if Bter didn't do it, the price of all NXT on the market would be 0.

It would stay depressed at 4-5k satoshi for 2-3 months if he chose to sell in equal portions (1m each day), that's how long it would take for the market to absorb 50M volume. If he chose to sell all in one go, it would go to 100-200 satoshi for a few hours, buying 50m NXTs at 500 satoshi takes only 250 Bitcoins, that's about daily volume of NXT trading. So all the 50m would be quickly bought within 1 day, that's rough calculations, give or take a few hours. Gradual selling over 2-3 months would hurt more because it'd be more prolonged bleeding, but not dramatic either.

Hacker can't control NXT network with 5% of the coins. The only thing he could do is what is quoted above.

quoting your opinion proves nothing.  we just saw 45M NXT bought for a measly 200BTC.  just goes to show you how badly the hacker wanted BTC instead of NXT.  yet he still hold 8M NXT to screw around the NXT network.  can one short NXT yet?

trying to physically buy up a crapload of asic mining equipment, build a secret datacenter equivalent to all the current mines out there, channel enough water and electricity to such a secret facility, hire the manpower and construction machinery to build out said center, hire the expertise to implement such hardware is NXT to impossible at this point.  we see asic chip makers pushing the 14nm chip frontier while Intel is still on 28nm.  and yet the boogeyman gubmint is supposed to be the bleeding edge?  no, i'll take the private, open source sector anytime.

agree...

If you are an investor want to damage a PoS coin you would prolly just lend the money to do it, like george soros when he messed up the british pound: http://internationalinvest.about.com/od/gettingstarted/a/Black-Wednesday-George-Soros-Bet-Against-Britain.htm
If you are  govt agency and want to get rid of a PoS coin you would prolly just send an email to the exchanges requesting the wallet they own, a few or prolly even 1 exchange would be enough to dictate the network.
If you are a hacker and want to get rid of a PoS coin you would prolly just hack Mintpal and Cryptsy or whatever, 1-3 exchanges should be enough to dictate the network (see Vericoin and Mintpal).

Keep in mind you just need 50+ percent of the current staking coins, not the total coins. Even stealing/buying old privatekeys that were filled with enough coins before a hardcoded and thus centralized checkpoint in a pos coin is suffiecient to rebuild a chain with a higher commulative difficulty and thus fork the network.

Trying to secure something with itself seems at least for me totally absurd. PoW gets secured by Hardware all around the globe, PoS secures itself with thin air.

If you steal PoW coins you steal money basically, you don´t endanger the network at any point, yes there will be panic sellers if you dump the coins but thats just a shortterm efffect, but if you steal PoS coins you steal way more then that, i can´t see how that has anything to do with being safer than PoW.



PS: The same fundamental PoS problem also applies to absurd concepts like the DRK masternode system.

[cypherdoc]

I'd argue the exact opposite and that is POW is dead (except for Bitcoin) and POS is the future. Look at all the innovation with POS coins: NXT, NEM, Crypti. Where is the innovation with POW? Litecoin? Darkcoin? Titcoin?

you are probably right when it comes to the other POW coins.

Does anyone still believe that purchasing a machine for thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to mine POW coins is still profitable?

look at the escalating hashrate.  certainly someone does.

Furthermore, as energy costs and hashrates continue to rise, fewer and fewer people will get involved with POW mining.

orders of mining equipment are still in high demand.  hashrate is still escalating.  when can we expect this participation to die off, please?

[cypherdoc]

Even stealing/buying old privatekeys that were filled with enough coins before a hardcoded and thus centralized checkpoint in a pos coin is suffiecient to rebuild a chain with a higher commulative difficulty and thus fork the network.

keep in mind that a checkpoint is not a secure form of the truth.  they are just lockdowns of history; and that history can be faulty.

[CoinHoarder]

Does anyone still believe that purchasing a machine for thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars to mine POW coins is still profitable?

look at the escalating hashrate.  certainly someone does.

Furthermore, as energy costs and hashrates continue to rise, fewer and fewer people will get involved with POW mining.

orders of mining equipment are still in high demand.  hashrate is still escalating.  when can we expect this participation to die off, please?

Lol... You obviously haven't done much Bitcoin ASIC investing if you think you can still break even. Eventually people will learn this and Bitcoin mining will become centralized.

All you did was shill for Hash Fast, a scam Bitcoin ASIC company, and spew lies about them so more people would buy their hardware that never came.

That was probably profitable for you, but most people got screwed by them.

[othe]

Even stealing/buying old privatekeys that were filled with enough coins before a hardcoded and thus centralized checkpoint in a pos coin is suffiecient to rebuild a chain with a higher commulative difficulty and thus fork the network.

keep in mind that a checkpoint is not a secure form of the truth.  they are just lockdowns of history; and that history can be faulty.

Of course, thats why we have another attack vector.
The thing is, if u take Peercoin for example they have masterkey for the syncheckpoints they have to broadcast every x (i think 30) days.

Steal his privatekey and enforce your own checkpoint on the "wrong" fork.
Or simpler, Sunnyking vanishes for whatever reason and then...no idea what happens but the checkpointing is useless.

[devphp]

There are no central checkpoints in NXT, only rolling checkpoints, and all txs deeper than 720 blocks are irreversible. When TF is implemented, all txs deeper than 10 blocks will be irreversible.

If you start your own fork, who will join you? By the way, you can start your own fork in Bitcoin too just as easily, but who will join you? This is just FUD you're spreading.

EDIT: don't take Peercoin for example, NXT's implementation of PoS has nothing to do with Peercoin's implementation.
To make an analogy: both apples and oranges are fruits, but they are very different.