Would it be beyond reason or scope for developers of bitcoin to implement a hybrid proof of stake / PoW system? Is it too late to do this? This gives much more security to the chain as it requires both 51% of all coins AND 51% of network hash to be owned by one person or pool.
Interesting solution. Apparently discussed before, for example,
here.
While I have strong faith in Bitcoin and in general in the community, this issue does concern me, especially with the way mining is going. I'm just thinking there has to be a solution, hopefully without requiring a hard fork.
I haven't really taken time to look into PoS, but it sounds extraordinarily stupid to me: if I were a botnet operator who insert millions of nodes into the network to broadcast my fake PoS blockchain, which can be easily made because there is no requirement on the amount of work, how do you know which chain is real? Also what if several people controlling large stakes are kidnapped and forced into give their private keys?