Quote from: praxiscat on May 28, 2014, 01:23:06 AM

Again, we are leaning towards PoS, not a new mining direction. Again whatever direction we go there will be detractors and supporters. In terms of the mechanics of PoS...we are still evaluating things, thus why we opened it up to the community. With that being said, our core dev does support a move towards PoS as supposed to a new mining algorithm, even though from his perspective it would be a heavy lift.

people who advocate PoS are just suffering from penis envy.

you may think I am completely biased but just think about this for a moment.

ALL crypto coins that are successful whether they are PoW or PoS are riding on the coat tails of Bitcoins success.
therefore ALL PoS coins would not even exist had it not been for the success of PoW. (there were attempts to create digital currencies prior to bitcoin and they all failed)

would Bitcoin have become successful if it was a PoS system?

I think not..

and here is why..

PoS relies on people to buy into the coin OR be given coins as a gift/donation.
There is not way for a person who doesn't own a PoS coin to acquire it by simply doing something independently. They must always interact with a person or a business that already has them. Therefore the distribution of the coin (even if it is given away for free) ALWAYS benefits the largest stakeholder. This acts as a kind of economic gravity which allows the Largest stakeholder to maintain control forever.

in a PoW system this is not the case. Stake holders, if they want more coins, must continually work for them.. Even if Satoshi nakamoto mines a million bitcoins with his CPU in the first few weeks of Bitcoin he is not guaranteed a place at the top forever... there is absolutely nothing stopping another player with enough resources from becoming more successful and acquiring more coins than him. and we see this happening every day... Large stakeholders are continually being threatened by new players who control vast amounts of mining resources. So older stakeholders are forced to work to grow the economy so that each coin is worth more instead of just creating more coins. In other words there is a direct competition between older stake holders and newer stakeholders and that competition is what drives innovation and growth.

in a PoS system these forces simply aren't there... there is no incentive at all for a person with 50%+ of the coin supply to do anything to grow the economy because they can simply sit on their fat ass and watch other people do it for them.

in many ways PoS more like the fiat system we have today where people are told that if they put money in the bank they will get interest without realizing that the interest they are getting is created by increasing the coin supply which in turn creates inflation. In other words the left hand gives them money while the right hand is firmly in their pocket taking more out. The entire system is rigged and controlled by OLD money and this is what PoS seeks to replicate.

now I am not saying bitcoin is perfect.. it certainly has some major flaws... but the idea of PoW is more democratic and egalitarian than PoS will ever be and in the end if PoW created the revolution against the corrupt fiat systems we have today... it will either win or die by that principle. PoS on the other hand is nothing more than a reactionary movement that seeks capitalize on the ignorance and greed of people coming from the fiat system and then to sell them something "New" which is really just more of the same.

if you want to capitalize on the latest trend and make some money from a short term bubble before it pops..then sure go with PoS.... but in the long run the only thing that will determine the success of a coin (regardless of whether it is PoS or PoW) is the strength of its community & infrastructure and its network distribution (ie network effect).