[Bitcoin-development] Proof-of-Stake branch?

[Stephen Reed <stephenreed@yahoo.com>]

Hello all.

I understand that Proof-of-Stake as a replacement for Proof-of-Work is a prohibited yet disputed change to Bitcoin Core. I would like to create a Bitcoin branch that provides a sandboxed testbed for researching the best PoS implementations. In the years to come, perhaps circumstances might arise, such as shifting of user opinion as to whether PoS should be moved from the prohibited list to the hard-fork list.
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A poll I conducted today on bitcointalk, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=581635.0 with an attention-grabbing title suggests some minority support for Bitcoin Proof-of-Stake. I invite any of you to critically comment on that thread.

"Annual 10% bitcoin dividends can be ours if  Proof-of-Stake full nodes outnumber existing Proof-of-Work full nodes by three-to-one. What is your choice?"

"I do not care or do not know enough." - 5 (16.1%) 
"I would download and run the existing Proof-of-Work program to fight the change." - 14 (45.2%) 
"I would download and run the new Proof-of-Stake program to favor the change. " - 12 (38.7%) 
Total Voters: 31 
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Before I branch the source code and learn the proper way of doing things in this community, I ask you simply if creating the branch is harmful? My goal is to develop, test and document PoS, while exploring its vulnerabilities and fixing them in a transparent fashion.

Thanks for taking a bit of your time to read this message.

-Steve

Stephen L. Reed

Austin, Texas, USA
512.791.7860