Post
Topic
Board Mining
Re: Network Redundancy
by
gmaxwell
on 25/11/2012, 19:51:14 UTC
Could you comment on the incentives to maintain full nodes described here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Proof_of_Stake

That page is pretty embarrassing.   There is absolutely no mention of the fundamental flaw in PoS consensus which none of your proposals have addressed:  As of yet none of the proof of stake proposals are workable because there is nothing at stake!   If someone is PoS mining it is in their best interest to attempt to concurrently build an honest chain as well as all possible attack forks just in case one of them happens to win.  Under most schemes this is the profit maximizing move, in all I've seen so far its at least neutral.  Mining an attack under PoW actually involves _spending_ something and taking the risk other miners will extend it. PoW works because your work is at stake so even a very small amount of honest miners make mercenary rational miners behave honestly too.

Moreover, I don't see why you argue here that it better aligns incentives. Parties can't mine PoW without having a validating node (or face the extreme risk other miners will toss them off on forks).  All it does is redistribute control, which might be useful— if not for the fact that it makes attacking more attractive for selfish participants.   I was hopeful of these techniques but as of yet I don't see how any can be workable.