PoS is far inferior to PoW - why are so many people advocating switching to PoS

[kodtycoon]

In a PoS system, acquiring enough stake to attack will cost you astronomical amount of money

Well it didn't cost the government an astronomical amount to obtain those massive amount of bitcoins from the silk road bust.
Lucky bitcoin isn't POS or it'll be screwed.

the amount they acquired wasnt even more then 1-2%? you would minimum 51% of coins to attack the network..

[phillipsjk]

On the outside chance that the OP really is Satoshi, and has been living under a rock for 2 years. I will explain my conjecture about what may be happening.

The first thing you have to understand is that the Banks want to take control of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Another member, sgbett, figured out in part how they will do this:

Governments have noticed it, powerful people have noticed it, *banks* have noticed it. Right now we are in a perfect storm of the aftermath of a huge overshoot on the purchase of mining equipment - this is *fact* as evidence by the hash rate/difficulty.

This will take time to unravel. It surely will though, as irrational as people are, they will eventually stop flushing money down the mining drain. That money will turn towards the supply. As it becomes obvious the bottom is in, that is when people will start the next run up. Only this time it isn't going to be just neckbeards, redditors, hipsters and anonymous, it will be institutions. That have pretty much unlimited buying power by virtue of them essentially being able to print their own money, because they are TBTF and will just keep bankrolling each other whilst nuzzling the teat of QE washing away their toxic assets.

So the move will be unprecedented.

Unprecedented to you and I and all the other peons around here. To those behind the move, they just spent a few hundred millions to acquire assets they can now assign book values of billions. Selling into this only makes you weaker in the end game, and selling is what they want you to do because those dollars you are acquiring get more worthless the more bitcoin they have. Who here though has the constitution to hold as they see the price double repeatedly. We are still at the end of the day all hardwired for fiat. As much as anyone pretends they are not.

(Bold mine)

The problem that the banks have in the scenario outlined above is that they can only do it once. The fact that coins are going to continue to be issued by lottery for over 100 years is a problem for them. They would lose control of the Bitcoin supply at a rate of like 3-10% per year. If Bitcoin used PoS, they would only need to control the supply (more than 50%) of Bitcoin at a certain point in time in order to lock everybody else out from issuing new Bitcoin.

Here is where the conjecture comes in: They hired a marketing expert to appeal to the greed Bitcoin users. The explicit goal appears to be to replace the consensus algorithm with "delegated proof-of-stake". The marketing expert released a video claiming that the "inflation" caused by proof-of-work mining is holding down the price. In a second video, he goes a little bit into why we would care about the price. However, he still fails to explain why the price should be artificially inflated when the network is not even ready to handle more than about 7 transactions per second.

[kokojie]

Really? PoW supporters are resorting to conspiracy theories now? well that's understandable, since the reality has shown
PoS is superior in every way.

[page14]

If you reverse PoS and PoW in your post, then your post would be 100% accurate and correct

Doesn't it cost nothing to attack a PoS coin? While you must use actual resources to attempt to attack a PoW coin?

Nope, just the contrary. In a PoW system, once you own the hardware, it cost nearly nothing to attack any eco-system that uses the same algorithm. As shown by many PoW altcoins attacked to death.

In a PoS system, acquiring enough stake to attack will cost you astronomical amount of money, (you can't really hack the stake, since it's illegitimate stake and can be rolled back by community action). Then once you acquire the stake, you could only attack one particular PoS system (which you own a majority stake in, why would you attack it? it's illogical).

Therefore, ZERO PoS system has been actually attacked so far.

I'm not sure why people ignore the fact that tons of PoW altcoin has been attacked, and ZERO PoS altcoin attacked so far, and still have the audacity to claim PoS is less secure.

The problem with your logic is that you must purchase your mining hardware in advance of attempting to attack the network. You will also not be able to sell your hardware until your attack is complete.

With  PoS coin, on the other hand you can potentially sell your "investment" in the coin prior to your attack being discovered by the rest of the network, which would result in you having a zero net cost to an attacker

[phillipsjk]

Really? PoW supporters are resorting to conspiracy theories now? well that's understandable, since the reality has shown
PoS is superior in every way.

I would like a compelling reason to consider Bitcoin widely "issued" or distributed. Only a small fraction of the population currently holds any Bitcoin at all.

PoW solves the initial distribution problem by lottery.

[Fernandez]

In a PoS system, acquiring enough stake to attack will cost you astronomical amount of money

Well it didn't cost the government an astronomical amount to obtain those massive amount of bitcoins from the silk road bust.
Lucky bitcoin isn't POS or it'll be screwed.

Yep, all government needs to do is to blackmail ghash and another pool and Bitcoin is theirs.

So much for the famed decentralization.

[cbeast]

In a PoS system, acquiring enough stake to attack will cost you astronomical amount of money

Well it didn't cost the government an astronomical amount to obtain those massive amount of bitcoins from the silk road bust.
Lucky bitcoin isn't POS or it'll be screwed.

Yep, all government needs to do is to blackmail ghash and another pool and Bitcoin is theirs.

So much for the famed decentralization.

Really? How much will they pay me to mine on the ghash pool?

[Buffer Overflow]

In a PoS system, acquiring enough stake to attack will cost you astronomical amount of money

Well it didn't cost the government an astronomical amount to obtain those massive amount of bitcoins from the silk road bust.
Lucky bitcoin isn't POS or it'll be screwed.

the amount they acquired wasnt even more then 1-2%? you would minimum 51% of coins to attack the network..

What I was pointing out is that doesn't always take an astronomical amount of money to acquire a large amount of coins. It's just a long running myth.

I'm not anti-pos by the way.

[spartacusrex]

I really like POS. I do. But there's an issue.. I won't go into the details, we all know what they are, but to break it down to it's simplest :

POS needs 1, just 1, TRUSTED number to start with, when you log in to the network. Then it's good to go (BASICALLY). However the POS coins wrap it up, NXT, blackcoin, DPOS systems etc etc.

That's the bottom line. Whatever ANYONE SAYS.

If you can handle that fact and don't mind, go for POS.

POW has flaws, yes, BUT there is no TRUST required at any stage. If this matters to you, POW is the only way to go.

For the most complete breakdown of the issues :

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/05/stake/

and then

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/10/03/slasher-ghost-developments-proof-stake/

[DumbFruit]

A PoS cryptocurrency relies on the steadfast benignity and vigilance of it's wealthiest few.

I'm not comfortable with that. If cooking some eggs on an otherwise useless machine is what it takes to avoid it, then I'm totally fine with that.

[kodtycoon]

I really like POS. I do. But there's an issue.. I won't go into the details, we all know what they are, but to break it down to it's simplest :

POS needs 1, just 1, TRUSTED number to start with, when you log in to the network. Then it's good to go (BASICALLY). However the POS coins wrap it up, NXT, blackcoin, DPOS systems etc etc.

That's the bottom line. Whatever ANYONE SAYS.

If you can handle that fact and don't mind, go for POS.

POW has flaws, yes, BUT there is no TRUST required at any stage. If this matters to you, POW is the only way to go.

For the most complete breakdown of the issues :

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/05/stake/

and then

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/10/03/slasher-ghost-developments-proof-stake/

can you explain what you mean by one trusted number? And explain the to start with bit to? I honestly don't follow what you mean by that?

[BombaUcigasa]

I honestly don't follow what you mean by that?

Did you know that for some PoS coins, a single exchange is the major holder? The coin will be forever under the control of that exchange because they maintained stake majority at one point in the past.

It costs NOTHING to attack the network once you held a majority of coins.

Did you know that for some PoS coins with PoW distribution, a single miner is the majority miner? The coins he generated passed through his wallet and he can forever control the future of the network. I know such a coin where a friend is the biggest miner.

It costs NOTHING to attack the network once you held a majority of coins.

Did you know that some coins with a small market cap can be completely bought up by a single entity without raising suspicions? The coins will forever give the owner an attack vector in the future even if he sells them away.

It costs NOTHING to attack the network once you held a majority of coins.

PoS changes the attack timing from a single point in time to a whole timeline. You can sell or trade or give away your coins, or even destroy them, you can still resurrect the coin.

Correction: it costs ~5$ a month to attack the network once you held a majority of coins...

[devphp]

It may be a revelation to some of you guys, but PoS 1 != PoS 2 != PoS 3. In other words PoS 1 and PoS 2 could be vulnerable and #3 implementation of PoS is not.

PoW cryptos are all copied from Bitcoin PoW model though. If you know the flaws of one PoW crypto, you know the flaws of them all.

PoS cryptos are under testing now, another year or two and we'll be much closer to learning which PoS implementation is the champion.

[kodtycoon]

I honestly don't follow what you mean by that?

Did you know that for some PoS coins, a single exchange is the major holder? The coin will be forever under the control of that exchange because they maintained stake majority at one point in the past.

It costs NOTHING to attack the network once you held a majority of coins.

Did you know that for some PoS coins with PoW distribution, a single miner is the majority miner? The coins he generated passed through his wallet and he can forever control the future of the network. I know such a coin where a friend is the biggest miner.

It costs NOTHING to attack the network once you held a majority of coins.

Did you know that some coins with a small market cap can be completely bought up by a single entity without raising suspicions? The coins will forever give the owner an attack vector in the future even if he sells them away.

It costs NOTHING to attack the network once you held a majority of coins.

PoS changes the attack timing from a single point in time to a whole timeline. You can sell or trade or give away your coins, or even destroy them, you can still resurrect the coin.

Correction: it costs ~5$ a month to attack the network once you held a majority of coins...

can you show me the math to prove this? or give a technical explanation of exactly how you would do this.. so far no one has been able to do this.

[phillipsjk]

can you show me the math to prove this? or give a technical explanation of exactly how you would do this.. so far no one has been able to do this.

Once you control 50%+1 of the votes, you vote for forks that give you equal or more voting power.

Check-points can help guard against this, but can be a central point of failure if not carefully implemented (possibly leveraging the Bitcoin PoW blockchain).

[devphp]

Once you control 50%+1 of the votes, you vote for forks that give you equal or more voting power.

Except nobody has done this yet. Other than that, you're mostly right In theory you can do a lot of things.

[kodtycoon]

can you show me the math to prove this? or give a technical explanation of exactly how you would do this.. so far no one has been able to do this.

Once you control 50%+1 of the votes, you vote for forks that give you equal or more voting power.

Check-points can help guard against this, but can be a central point of failure if not carefully implemented (possibly leveraging the Bitcoin PoW blockchain).

what you are explaining is a 51% attack not a "history attack" which is what BombaUcigasa was trying(and failing) to explain and what you have just said does not answer the question i asked.

see this is what im talking about.. no one can provide the math to prove this? or give a technical explanation of exactly how you would do this

show the math and the technical explanation or its pure tripe.

[DumbFruit]

Once you control 50%+1 of the votes, you vote for forks that give you equal or more voting power.

Except nobody has done this yet. Other than that, you're mostly right In theory you can do a lot of things.

Do you think this frivolous answer addresses the fundamental problem? This is why people find PoS supporters so tiresome.

Do you think billion dollar companies are going to put their weight behind "nobody has done this yet"?

Maybe if you said, "We're a centralized cryptocurrency run by technocratic overlords, if our currency does something wrong, we'll unilaterally modify it. If you don't like it, you can suck our balls." we would be less critical of you.

[phillipsjk]

Once you control 50%+1 of the votes, you vote for forks that give you equal or more voting power.

Check-points can help guard against this, but can be a central point of failure if not carefully implemented (possibly leveraging the Bitcoin PoW blockchain).

what you are explaining is a 51% attack not a "history attack" which is what BombaUcigasa was trying(and failing) to explain and what you have just said does not answer the question i asked.

see this is what im talking about.. no one can provide the math to prove this? or give a technical explanation of exactly how you would do this

show the math and the technical explanation or its pure tripe.

You can't mathematically prove it, because the other stake-holders can roll back to any point of time of their choosing.

In other words, PoS does not actually form a consensus.

Edit: I am not sure I understand the distinction between a 51% and "history" attack. The point of the block-chain is to document and order transactions.

[kodtycoon]

You can't mathematically prove it, because the other stake-holders can roll back to any point of time of their choosing.

In other words, PoS does not actually form a consensus.

that does not mathematical proof is impossible. also the nxt blockchain cannot be rolled back past 12 hours. for any reason. so instantly you have proven you do not understand the tech and that you do not know how PoS actually works. the white paper and the "math of nxt forging paper" prove that what you are saying is not true..

what you say could be true for other variants of PoS but it does not have a leg to stand on when discussing nxt.