Decentralization as I understand it has nothing to do with democracy or fairness, but rather accessibility.
Agreed, I'm not a big fan of democracy, since it's the "original 51% attack". Or mob rule as some like to call it.
Would it not seem that POS is far more accessible, requiring nothing more than a standard laptop or raspberry pi to operate the wallet?
Well, that's what you need to prove. Scientifically.
You need to show that POS will be in every case a better solution than POW.
Buzzwords and assumptions are not doing that.
Yes, I'm aware that a raspberry pi requires less energy than a 2kW ASIC, but that is irrelevant.
What is relevant is whether we achieve true
distributed consensus or not.
If this can only be done in an energy intensive way, then so be it.
The problem with all the links you posted (if I may say so) is that all of them have already made up their mind that POW is bad, and that it needs to be replaced with their new favorite: POS.
I find this rather suspicious and unscientific, this certainly won't convince me.
I need a paper where someone unapologetically and mercilessly wants to falsify whether POS or POW is better, without prefering POS from the getgo.
The premise can't be "POS is the solution - don't you see that it requires barely any energy??? - let's find justifications/rationalizations why POS will replace POW",
but rather "let's compare POS and POW and figure out what they actually do
regarding distributed consensus".
I think this paper here tries to do that:
https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdfAnd here's the reddit discussion about this paper:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2jwbvr/excellent_paper_on_why_proof_of_stake_is/If POS is really this super solution then we need to scrutinize it mercilessly.
Not cuddle with it.If POS still stands after such a beating, then you convince me.