51% of staking pos-coins at exchange = Coin is dead

[gustav]

If exchanges stake and have most of the pos-coins with them they can fork the coin later on.
So pos-coins that have been concentrated at one large exchange and have been staking there are done. The coin is then at the whim of the employees of that exchange since they can doublespent all they want at any point in the future.
Imagine this went on in silence, the coin gets adopted by the masses and they carry out the attack years later. WHAT A MESS!

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[PereguineBerty]

It's no doubt a possibility but if an exchange does instigate double spends, then it would only be shooting itself in the foot. They'd lose out on potential revenue if trading a coin that is compromised and if their actions were discovered, it would be game over for their entire business as no nobody would trust them.

It's only likely to happen with smaller coins and a lot of newer PoS coins have automatic checkpointing set up which is a counter measure to this kind of attack, although this doesn't rule out the possibility.

[gustav]

It's no doubt a possibility but if an exchange does instigate double spends, then it would only be shooting itself in the foot. They'd lose out on potential revenue if trading a coin that is compromised and if their actions were discovered, it would be game over for their entire business as no nobody would trust them.

It's only likely to happen with smaller coins and a lot of newer PoS coins have automatic checkpointing set up which is a counter measure to this kind of attack, although this doesn't rule out the possibility.

i would have thought about a scenario too, where the exchange keeps operating like normal and maybe years after they closed down carry out the attack, when the coin was adopted by the masses already and could carry marketcap in the billions potentially.  

That's a good reason to say: pos is not fit for massadoption right now. It works maybe for smaller marketcap, but multibillion-dollar-cap is too high risk.


note: i am holding myself pos-coins right now

this just came to my mind when reading the vericointhread today

[boxuser]

so true

[Malin Keshar]

Isn't double spend when someone has 51% of the hashpower?

Why no one say or question about 51% attacks by someone having 51%OF THE COINS?

[gustav]

Isn't double spend when someone has 51% of the hashpower?

Why no one say or question about 51% attacks by someone having 51%OF THE COINS?

that's what we are talking about - in fact you need less than 51%
and the exchange has them

[Spoetnik]

Jackpot coin has the world's first coin with a different algo running fro POS and POW

[Malin Keshar]

Isn't double spend when someone has 51% of the hashpower?

Why no one say or question about 51% attacks by someone having 51%OF THE COINS?

that's what we are talking about - in fact you need less than 51%
and the exchange has them

Any links explaining about this attack? Never heard about it.

Is bitcoin vulnerable too?

[gustav]

Isn't double spend when someone has 51% of the hashpower?

Why no one say or question about 51% attacks by someone having 51%OF THE COINS?

that's what we are talking about - in fact you need less than 51%
and the exchange has them

Any links explaining about this attack? Never heard about it.

Is bitcoin vulnerable too?

search the forum. You find many discussions about vulnerabilities of pos.
No, btc and pow-coins not affected.

[Brewins]

If someone manage to have 50%+ of the coins, then its dead anyway and don't have too much to fall anyway. Plus the owner would be killing the value of their stack, so would be stupid thing to do.

[Mt. Gox]

Isn't only a small percentage of the total coin supply in exchanges at any given time though?

Isn't double spend when someone has 51% of the hashpower?

Why no one say or question about 51% attacks by someone having 51%OF THE COINS?

Isn't double spend when someone has 51% of the hashpower?

Why no one say or question about 51% attacks by someone having 51%OF THE COINS?

that's what we are talking about - in fact you need less than 51%
and the exchange has them

Any links explaining about this attack? Never heard about it.

Is bitcoin vulnerable too?

No, Bitcoin is proof-of-work, as are most coins such as Litecoin and Dogecoin. You use a miner to mine bitcoins. Proof-of-stake is different. There is no real "mining". Sunny King or BCNext (I forgot which) described it as each coin being like it's very own tiny mining rig that can generate more coins in the future. Peercoin uses both PoW (short term) and PoS (long term), but there are coins out there like Nxt which are pure PoS.

[sed]

IMHO, there are way too many of these altcoins running around and appearing and disappearing so fast these days.  How could anyone take any of them seriously as long as the scene is like a high-school dance.  I think the OP makes a really solid point about pos coins held by exchanges.  But I guess I think that most of those coins are DOA anyway, no matter who is holding them.

[91porn]

why not say pow coins?tons of suck pow coins.

[devphp]

i would have thought about a scenario too, where the exchange keeps operating like normal and maybe years after they closed down carry out the attack, when the coin was adopted by the masses already and could carry marketcap in the billions potentially. 

Dude, how can you think of this scenario, if you clearly have no idea what you're talking about at this stage of development PoS coins have either centralized (Peercoin) or decentralized rolling (NXT) checkpoints, which means nothing can be changed before the checkpoint block no matter how many coins you have or had, everything before the checkpoint block is irreversible and cannot be overwritten. You pull out crazy ideas out of your ass with your half knowledge, please feel free to educate yourself first