Re: [bitcoin-dev] Opinion on proof of stake in future

[Cloud Strife <quantumas3@gmail.com>]

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Proof of stake is permissioned by coins, an internal, permissioned, and
already owned resource.

You cannot gain tokens without someone choosing to give up those coins - a
form of permission. Permission can also be thought of as an infinite
barrier to entry.

PoW forces giving up control through both permissionless to enter mining
via EXTERNAL permissionless resources and unforgeable costliness for the
miners.

Without unforgeable costliness there's no reason to ever give up control in
PoS.

In fact, staking quite literally incentivizes keeping control by rewarding
those in control with more coins and control in perpetuity at no cost - the
incentives on PoS are completely backwards from decentralizing control.

Since no mechanism forces control to be permissionlessly distributed to
others, parties in control cannot be considered independent parties nor can
control be considered decentralized.

PoS solves nothing that's relevant to permissionless decentralized networks.


> In the following years we'll be seeing proof of stake being implemented


It has been implemented since 2014 but it doesn't meet criteria for a
permissionless network. There's nothing new about implementing permissioned
networks.

You could try to replace proof of work with proof of bitcoin burn (not well
studied) on blockchains other than Bitcoin, but there's no known
replacement for proof of work for Bitcoin right now.

PoS has been considered and studied since then many times since then and
dismissed repeatedly for irrelevance to decentralized permissionless
technology, examples:

   - https://nakamotoinstitute.org/research/on-stake-and-consensus/
   -
   https://medium.com/@factchecker9000/nothing-is-worse-than-proof-of-stake-e70b12b988ca
   - https://www.truthcoin.info/blog/pow-cheapest/
   -
   https://hugonguyen.medium.com/work-is-timeless-stake-is-not-554c4450ce18
   - https://arxiv.org/abs/1809.06528



On Sat, May 8, 2021 at 10:49 AM Karl via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> What is more important;
>> Bitcoin mining introduces the first free-market demand for the cheapest
>> energy source.
>
>
> This is a really great idea but I think access to technologically advanced
> hardware is a stronger component than energy here.
>
> Making open community chip fabs might change that.  Then anybody could get
> on the bandwagon.  But right now the hardware barrier keeps the common
> person out.
>
> If you can build a chip fab, you may also be able to build a powerplant.
> Not many others can do that to compete with you.  The energy economy still
> has more supply than competition or renewable energy would quickly
> outcompete nonrenewable as the price dropped.
>
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