Well, there is Spreadcoin but I consider the "jury still out" on it.  Possibly some "hardened spreadcoin" might work some day.  I might even try implementing such a thing before long.


My main concerns with DPoS (as distinct from PoS) are primarily that any centralization becomes a point of weakness so intentionally re-introducing it seems misguided to me, and that people tend to be lazy and often don't delegate in a way that will serve their own best interests.  Otherwise my concerns about general PoS are pretty well eumerated elsewhere (nothing at stake attacks, retroactive 51% attacks, etc) so I won't speak much to those.


I consider these to be separate concerns, and conflating them may be downright dangerous.  In recent history of alt-coins the ones doing the developments are also usually the ones with the least interest in the well-being of the network!  In most cases it is the developers, themselves, who attack and destroy.  Why should we promote a model that just affords them even more facility to do so?


This is just a trade off, with PoS instead providing incentive to hoard.  I'm not sure we can reasonably call one or the other the "lesser or two evils" and should strive to avoid both problems.

Furthermore, there is some theory that PoS is actually not different from PoW, and one could imagine a "stake grinding" ASIC.  I don't know of any such hardware, but it wouldn't surprise me much to see.  From what I understand of DPoS it does solve the problem of stake grinding in general, but does so in a way that re-introduces both incentive for collusion and potential for Sybil.  (I have my own theories that this may end up putting DPoS back at the "wrong security threshold" of 30% (like any traditional consensus mechanism) as well!)


Understand that the only monetary reward for providing the work would be tx fees, no new coin-base subsidies, so it is unlikely that there would ever be a time where mining work would be more profitable than providing service.  I think we can assume that providers (rational providers, acting in their best interests as you say) would apply only excess resource, that they are not renting out, toward mining.  As such, I think all that we can infer is that a PoW hash-rate might be of higher natural variance because of this, and little more can be said.


There is no real reason that block times in PoW couldn't be similarly reduced.  (Misconceptions about this abound, though, so perhaps I will need to say more?)


How do you figure?  This sounds a lot like rhetoric to me, can you please expand upon your reasoning?


I'm not sure if this is a meaningful comparison.  These relative numbers seem rather arbitrary to me.... shouldn't any meaningful comparison account for relative network size?  Isn't any measure of security derived from a metric of participation?  (Can it be otherwise?)


I think this sentiment arises mostly out of comparison of the "self evident" security of PoW versus the "implied" security of PoS.  We have now solid formal models around the relationship between PoW incentives and the relative security it provides.  We lack comparable formal treatment of PoS, though I understand there are those attempting to rectify this.  In other words, I think this is largely born out of "fear of the unknown" which may actually be a legitimate fear for Zennet to carry.

Finally, a simple argument can be made that PoS models are relatively new and not well "battle tested" where PoW has been attacked from pretty much every possible angle and has held strong.

Anyway, while this is all intellectually interesting I think it is possibly largely out of context.  Much of what we are discussing here has nothing at all to do with Zennet itself, and is just general discussion about PoS versus PoW.  I think this is a holy war that should perhaps be fought elsewhere.