Quote from: Blitzboy on May 23, 2023, 05:47:38 PM

It's indeed a lamentable evolution that the promise of trustless staking in PoS systems seems to be eroding, replaced by these centralized validators. From a purely technical standpoint, this does shift the crypto landscape towards a pseudo-traditional banking model. The original appeal of crypto was the prospect of disrupting and redefining how value is stored and transacted. However, as with most developments, the implementation often does not align with the theoretical ideals.

The necessity of validators in PoS systems has been a technical compromise to address the issue of scalability and energy consumption found in PoW systems. Validators or staking pools also help smaller investors to participate in the staking and earning process. However, this doesn't necessarily condemn PoS to a future of centralization. Blockchain projects are tirelessly working towards innovative solutions. The introduction of sharding in Ethereum 2.0 and parachains in Polkadot are examples of this. There's a silver lining here; the sector is young, and the opportunity for evolution remains ripe.

Developers are making PoS cryptocurrencies similar to banks. By trusting a validator, you're trusting a third-party with your funds. Wasn't crypto meant to remove the middleman? I know there are some old coins around that can be staked in a trustless manner, but they're not as popular as their centralized counterparts. They're often low-valued and forgotten by the vast majority of traders and investors alike. You can see why good projects like Peercoin and Blackcoin aren't even mentioned anymore.

This is good for the government, because the increasing centralization of PoS coins will give them the ability to do anything they want against the revolution without any obstacles. They can simply target centralized exchanges and/or centralized staking pools to take down (or manipulate) the cryptocurrency of their preference for good. It's a dark future PoS is heading into, and there's nothing we can do about it. Sad

Quote from: rat4 on May 24, 2023, 08:03:46 AM

I still work on the good old PoS although under a new project name. At some point a leasing mechanism was added, but it's truthly optional. Right now a 5th upgrade of the protocol is being researched. You can check out the thread where BlackCoin was originally announced: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=469640.0

Pretty cool. I'm excited to know there's still someone working on good-old fashioned PoS to help preserve decentralization and censorship-resistance. I was heavily invested in Blackcoin within my early days of crypto, but I've switched to other coins after BLK went all the way down the drain in market price. This cryptocurrency, alongside Peercoin (PPC), Diamond (DMD), and Magi (XMG) are my favorites. Can't wait to see what's next in store for the rewamped version of the Blackcoin project.