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

[moiraine]

The fact that POS encourages holding alone dooms any POS coin imo. For any coin to succeed it need adoption, which implies actual spending. At least with POW there's often a better distribution of coins which leads to a decently sized community working for adoption, as opposed to POS when there's like 3 whales staking 70% of the supply spamming posts about how amazing a coin is...

Sure you can argue that POW coins can have a similar situation with insta/pre mine but assuming a fair coin reward system, once the mining community matures for a POW coin the coin distribution will always be fairer than a POS system, which is the first step towards adoption.

just my 2c ofc

[1713582237]

1713582237

[1713582237]

1713582237

[devphp]

The fact that POS encourages holding alone dooms any POS coin imo. For any coin to succeed it need adoption, which implies actual spending. At least with POW there's often a better distribution of coins which leads to a decently sized community working for adoption, as opposed to POS when there's like 3 whales staking 70% of the supply spamming posts about how amazing a coin is...

Sure you can argue that POW coins can have a similar situation with insta/pre mine but assuming a fair coin reward system, once the mining community matures for a POW coin the coin distribution will always be fairer than a POS system, which is the first step towards adoption.

just my 2c ofc

PoS doesn't encourage hodling any more than PoW encourages hodling. For example, profits from forging with your NXT stake is less than 0.5%/yearly, anything gives better return that that, NXT assets in the first place. But to buy NXT assets on the asset exchange you need to actually spend your NXT, which goes against the idea of hodling.

[aa]

Attacking PoS is as simple as attacking the exchange with the most PoS coins held--a few coins have already proven this with their bad algo, their shady devs, and their shady deals.

How can a coin be stable if the devs can choose to reverse every transaction in order to recover coins that were stolen from a shitty exchange that traded in a shitty coin? How can they justify reversing all legit transactions that took place between the attack and the reversal? Unless, of course, the coin's only purpose is as a pump and dump that only has traffic between the exchange and the coin holders.

Not that you can expect much from Piece of Shit coins.

[DumbFruit]

any NEW user would download MY CHAIN.

Bob has a client that only downloads valid chains.
He sees 99 nodes with invalid chain and 1 node with valid chain (more stake involved).
Which one does he download?

My node knows which chain is valid, the one with more stake involved.

You need to build a valid longer chain without majority of stake. Which, as we are discussing, requires extreme amounts of computing power (calculations pending).

What calculations?
Look, if stakeholders can calculate an appropriate chain in real time right now without PoW on their PC's, why in the Seven Hells would it be impossible to do the same thing in a 51% stake attack? At most it would require an additional PC, and it probably doesn't even require that.

And you keep saying things like "My node knows which chain is valid, the one with more stake involved." even though if a reorg attack happens, the wrong chain would be specifically built to have more stake involved, that's why it's a 51% stake attack. (Or could be a N@S 51% stake attack.)

Hell, I could boot up a brand new NxT coin tomorrow and build a chain that looks like it had more coins moving around on it, and had more stake involved because I would just give myself all the coins. The only reason this attack isn't going on right now is because of the centrally managed checkpoint system.

And I guess that's fine, if that's what you want out of your currency, but it is absolutely not a blanket improvement on PoW. The beauty of PoW, and the reason I ever bothered with Bitcoin to begin with, is that it requires zero trust to reach consensus all around the world. As far as I've seen, PoS is light-years behind PoW when it comes to decentralized consensus.

If you're willing to give up decentralized consensus, then it begs the question; Why bother with PoS? Why not use something similar to the battle-tested Public Key Infrastructure that we use today to secure internet communications? Then it would be a real technocratic currency, and you wouldn't have to worry about what exchanges, governments, hackers, or the wealthy elite do with the large wallets they have (or had), you'd just have to trust the root authorities.

[devphp]

any NEW user would download MY CHAIN.

Bob has a client that only downloads valid chains.
He sees 99 nodes with invalid chain and 1 node with valid chain (more stake involved).
Which one does he download?

My node knows which chain is valid, the one with more stake involved.

You need to build a valid longer chain without majority of stake. Which, as we are discussing, requires extreme amounts of computing power (calculations pending).

What calculations?
Look, if stakeholders can calculate an appropriate chain in real time right now without PoW on their PC's, why in the Seven Hells would it be impossible to do the same thing in a 51% stake attack? At most it would require an additional PC, and it probably doesn't even require that.

And you keep saying things like "My node knows which chain is valid, the one with more stake involved." even though if a reorg attack happens, the wrong chain would be specifically built to have more stake involved, that's why it's a 51% stake attack. (Or could be a N@S 51% stake attack.)

Hell, I could boot up a brand new NxT coin tomorrow and build a chain that looks like it had more coins moving around on it, and had more stake involved because I would just give myself all the coins. The only reason this attack isn't going on right now is because of the centrally managed checkpoint system.

And I guess that's fine, if that's what you want out of your currency, but it is absolutely not a blanket improvement on PoW. The beauty of PoW, and the reason I ever bothered with Bitcoin to begin with, is that it requires zero trust to reach consensus all around the world. As far as I've seen, PoS is light-years behind PoW when it comes to decentralized consensus.

If you're willing to give up decentralized consensus, then it begs the question; Why bother with PoS? Why not use something similar to the battle-tested Public Key Infrastructure that we use today to secure internet communications? Then it would be a real technocratic currency, and you wouldn't have to worry about what exchanges, governments, hackers, or the wealthy elite do with the large wallets they have (or had), you'd just have to trust the root authorities.

So if you suddenly learned that there is no centrally managed checkpoint system in NXT, which reason for this attack not going on would you be able to come up with? The sooner you'll start thinking of this new reason, the better, because someone will be sure to say soon enough that there is no centrally managed chekpoint system in NXT )

[moiraine]

The fact that POS encourages holding alone dooms any POS coin imo. For any coin to succeed it need adoption, which implies actual spending. At least with POW there's often a better distribution of coins which leads to a decently sized community working for adoption, as opposed to POS when there's like 3 whales staking 70% of the supply spamming posts about how amazing a coin is...

Sure you can argue that POW coins can have a similar situation with insta/pre mine but assuming a fair coin reward system, once the mining community matures for a POW coin the coin distribution will always be fairer than a POS system, which is the first step towards adoption.

just my 2c ofc

PoS doesn't encourage hodling any more than PoW encourages hodling. For example, profits from forging with your NXT stake is less than 0.5%/yearly, anything gives better return that that, NXT assets in the first place. But to buy NXT assets on the asset exchange you need to actually spend your NXT, which goes against the idea of hodling.

I'm not familiar with nxt assets, I was referring to POS in general. Having ANY POS whatsoever discourages spending and thus kills adoption. Having no POS encourages spending, because your money will be worth less than it is tommorow. Alt-coins are supposed to be just that, coins, a currency. If you dont want your currency to devalue you invest it somewhere(get interest at a bank, buy stocks w/e), you shouldn't expect the act of holding to be rewarded.

[DumbFruit]

So if you suddenly learned that there is no centrally managed checkpoint system in NXT, which reason for this attack not going on would you be able to come up with? The sooner you'll start thinking of this new reason, the better, because someone will be sure to say soon enough that there is no centrally managed chekpoint system in NXT )

Oh please. It's all well and good to have a built-in rolling checkpoints, but that doesn't help a new client figure out which one is the right blockchain. Again, I could boot up a new NxT tomorrow that could do rolling checkpoints, that can't help new clients figure out which blockchain is correct, unless you erroneously suppose that the majority of nodes will always provide the appropriate checkpoints. (See Sybil attack.)

Here is the genesis block;
https://github.com/Blackcomb/nxt/blob/master/src/java/nxt/Genesis.java

And here is where it defines the "MileStone Block" (A rose by any other name...)
https://github.com/Blackcomb/nxt/blob/master/src/java/nxt/BlockchainProcessorImpl.java

So I'm just going to call your bluff on that one.

[devphp]

I'm not familiar with nxt assets, I was referring to POS in general. Having ANY POS whatsoever discourages spending and thus kills adoption. Having no POS encourages spending, because your money will be worth less than it is tommorow. Alt-coins are supposed to be just that, coins, a currency. If you dont want your currency to devalue you invest it somewhere(get interest at a bank, buy stocks w/e), you shouldn't expect the act of holding to be rewarded.

It doesn't make sense to talk about PoS in general, because PoS 1 != PoS 2 != PoS 3. When you talk about PoS, you must mention a specific implementation of PoS you refer to. While PoW cryptos are all the same, copies of Bitcoin code (except Bytecoin/Monero cryptos which have the same basic flaws of PoW that Bitcoin has), PoS implementations are all different (Peercoin != NXT != Bitshares != NEM != Qora, NODE, etc.), their flaws would also be different, you can't put them all in the same group if you are serious about your claims.

[devphp]

So if you suddenly learned that there is no centrally managed checkpoint system in NXT, which reason for this attack not going on would you be able to come up with? The sooner you'll start thinking of this new reason, the better, because someone will be sure to say soon enough that there is no centrally managed chekpoint system in NXT )

Oh please. It's all well and good to have a built-in rolling checkpoints, but that doesn't help a new client figure out which one is the right blockchain. Again, I could boot up a new NxT tomorrow that could do rolling checkpoints, that can't help new clients figure out which blockchain is correct, unless you erroneously suppose that the majority of nodes will always provide the appropriate checkpoints. (See Sybil attack.)

Here is the genesis block;
https://github.com/Blackcomb/nxt/blob/master/src/java/nxt/Genesis.java

And here is where it defines the "MileStone Block" (A rose by any other name...)
https://github.com/Blackcomb/nxt/blob/master/src/java/nxt/BlockchainProcessorImpl.java

So I'm just going to call your bluff on that one.

Actually I called your bluff, as apparently you're not familiar with what crypto has what and only parrot other people's opinions, not based on math.

[Bombadil]

I'm not familiar with nxt assets, I was referring to POS in general. Having ANY POS whatsoever discourages spending and thus kills adoption. Having no POS encourages spending, because your money will be worth less than it is tommorow. Alt-coins are supposed to be just that, coins, a currency. If you dont want your currency to devalue you invest it somewhere(get interest at a bank, buy stocks w/e), you shouldn't expect the act of holding to be rewarded.

It doesn't make sense to talk about PoS in general, because PoS 1 != PoS 2 != PoS 3. When you talk about PoS, you must mention a specific implementation of PoS you refer to. While PoW cryptos are all the same, copies of Bitcoin code (except Bytecoin/Monero cryptos which have the same basic flaws of PoW that Bitcoin has), PoS implementations are all different (Peercoin != NXT != Bitshares != NEM != Qora, NODE, etc.), their flaws would also be different, you can't put them all in the same group if you are serious about your claims.

Yep, PoS has so many styles and tastes, it's hard to keep track. There should be a page somewhere explaining the differences between several PoS systems

[DumbFruit]

Actually I called your bluff, as apparently you're not familiar with what crypto has what and only parrot other people's opinions, not based on math.

lol! I'm pointing at the damn source code.
Here is where getting the MileStoneBlockId's is defined;
https://github.com/Blackcomb/nxt/blob/master/src/java/nxt/peer/GetMilestoneBlockIds.java

Who do you suppose provides these MileStones every 1440 blocks to ensure an improper reorg doesn't occur before them? Hm?

I'll give you a hint;

           String lastMilestoneBlockIdString = (String) request.get("lastMilestoneBlockId");
            if (lastMilestoneBlockIdString != null) {
                Block lastMilestoneBlock = Nxt.getBlockchain().getBlock(Convert.parseUnsignedLong(lastMilestoneBlockIdString));
                if (lastMilestoneBlock == null) {
                    throw new IllegalStateException("Don't have block " + lastMilestoneBlockIdString);
                }
                height = lastMilestoneBlock.getHeight();
                jump = Math.min(1440, Nxt.getBlockchain().getLastBlock().getHeight() - height);
                height = Math.max(height - jump, 0);
                limit = 10;
            } else if (lastBlockIdString != null) {
                height = Nxt.getBlockchain().getLastBlock().getHeight();
                jump = 10;
                limit = 10;
            } else {
                peer.blacklist();
                response.put("error", "Old getMilestoneBlockIds protocol not supported, please upgrade");
                return response;
            }

edit: Erm, I'm pretty sure it's 14400 blocks, actually.

[Daedelus]

I'm not familiar with nxt assets, I was referring to POS in general.

This is the problem. What you are effectively doing is creating something with weaknesses and then attacking that, rather than looking at the best in class of what exists and trying to apply your thoughts there. This is the definition of a strawman argument.

Investing in ternary hardware processors, payment processors and mining pools count as spending.

[devphp]

Actually I called your bluff, as apparently you're not familiar with what crypto has what and only parrot other people's opinions, not based on math.

lol! I'm pointing at the damn source code.
Here is where getting the MileStoneBlockId's is defined;
https://github.com/Blackcomb/nxt/blob/master/src/java/nxt/peer/GetMilestoneBlockIds.java

Who do you suppose provides these MileStones every 1440 blocks to ensure an improper reorg doesn't occur before them? Hm?

I'll give you a hint;

            String lastMilestoneBlockIdString = (String) request.get("lastMilestoneBlockId");
            if (lastMilestoneBlockIdString != null) {
                Block lastMilestoneBlock = Nxt.getBlockchain().getBlock(Convert.parseUnsignedLong(lastMilestoneBlockIdString));
                if (lastMilestoneBlock == null) {
                    throw new IllegalStateException("Don't have block " + lastMilestoneBlockIdString);
                }
                height = lastMilestoneBlock.getHeight();
                jump = Math.min(1440, Nxt.getBlockchain().getLastBlock().getHeight() - height);
                height = Math.max(height - jump, 0);
                limit = 10;
            } else if (lastBlockIdString != null) {
                height = Nxt.getBlockchain().getLastBlock().getHeight();
                jump = 10;
                limit = 10;
            } else {
                peer.blacklist();
                response.put("error", "Old getMilestoneBlockIds protocol not supported, please upgrade");
                return response;
            }

Who?

[DumbFruit]

Who?

What happens after 10 1440 block "jumps" and it hits the "limit"?

[devphp]

Who?

What happens after 10 1440 block "jumps" and it hits the "limit"?

No, don't ask me. You claim that there are centralized checkpoints or whatever you claim there is, prove the flaws, it's your job.

[gatra]

That vote is directly proportional to the amount of tokens they own. Technically (assuming all stakeholders vote) you need 51% of the currency supply to have total control of which delegates get elected.

That assumption is not safe. They should show in the block explorer how much % of the supply is actually being used to vote. I'd bet not much.

A couple of questions, since I haven't read documentation or code on DPOS:

1) How do you know the 101 are actually different people? most coins don't have 101 people who care.

2) Is the voting, electing, and the revoking of the right to be one of the 101 done automatically by the protocol? or is there human intervention (other than the voting)?

3) If I get 51% of the % of the supply that actually votes (which I bet is much less than 51% of the total supply) at any time in history (after the last update), then I could vote on the main chain, and then vote differently in an attacking chain. Then I could rewrite everything. Couldn't I?

4) If delegate N decides to ignore blocks N-1 and N-2 and build on block N-3, and then delegate N+1 builds up from block N, then blocks N-1 and N-2 would be skipped and considered missing? So 2 delegates could collude against the other 2? Now extend that 2 to 6 or to whatever number of confirmations are used...

[gatra]

any NEW user would download MY CHAIN.

Bob has a client that only downloads valid chains.
He sees 99 nodes with invalid chain and 1 node with valid chain (more stake involved).
Which one does he download?

My node knows which chain is valid, the one with more stake involved.

You need to build a valid longer chain without majority of stake. Which, as we are discussing, requires extreme amounts of computing power (calculations pending).

wtf? No! Nothing requires extreme amounts of computing in POS. That's the point of POS.

The attack would be possible, but it is not only because checkpoints

[LiQio]

wtf? No! Nothing requires extreme amounts of computing in POS. That's the point of POS

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=303898.msg3372610#msg3372610

[DumbFruit]

Who?

What happens after 10 1440 block "jumps" and it hits the "limit"?

No, don't ask me. You claim that there are centralized checkpoints or whatever you claim there is, prove the flaws, it's your job.

It's not a "flaw", it's a checkpoint every 14400 blocks, which equates to 10 days. So if your server goes offline, or forks, for longer than that, then you need to download the chain from a trusted party, which usually comes from nxtcrypto.org or nxtbase.com (Or nodes that are trusted by them.). Did I read something wrong?

[Daedelus]

wtf? No! Nothing requires extreme amounts of computing in POS.

*Sigh*

Which POS?