Post
Topic
Board Altcoin Discussion
Re: rpietila Altcoin Observer
by
bigj
on 05/07/2014, 18:38:17 UTC
PoS put to rest:
A big text for nothing.
The only argument is :
Quote
there will be times where two nodes disagree
and it's wrong. Or at least not even debated.
Disagree what ? He talks like nodes have their own will.
Disagree by working on different chains for some amount of time.

Forking ? As if PoW cannot fork ?
There is no work (mining) in PoS. You don't compete on wasting resources, that's the goal.


And that's the problem

The goal of a PoW-based system is to make it more expensive to amass 51% of the hash rate in order to be able to control the outcome of a fork.  (After all, what is a fork but a disagreement about which transactions to include and who should get paid for the block?).

A PoS-system is aptly named, because it rewards amassing that 51%.

The PoS boosters handwave and claim that doing so would devalue the coins owned by the 51% attacker, but that really just means the attacker would need to be more subtle.

It's a deeply flawed idea in pursuit of a good, but I believe impossible, goal -- decentralized, untrusted consensus without waste.


I love to read about impossible goals! So, things like "decentralized, untrusted consensus without waste" attract me like a good pot of honey.

In this regard, I like to draw your attention to Arrow’s paradox (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow's_impossibility_theorem), which may serve well as a good source of further discussion here.

Best, brainbug