I like it, but needs more detailed reasoning. Dfinity's deterministic threshold signatures are a counter-example. I like focusing on available randomness, it's an argument I often use. But I don't feel it sufficiently explains why the reasoning is circular.
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Yes, as I said in the article above, if the PoS protocol tries to generate randomness internally, that's not circular reasoning but that scheme breaks down for a different reason.
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I briefly looked into DFINITY before in https://medium.com/@hugonguyen/proof-of-stake-private-keys-attacks-and-unforgeable-costliness-the-unsung-hero-5caca70b01cb …, but didn’t go in-depth into the randomness aspect.
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IMO the main problem with DFINITY lies in their mechanism to create threshold groups. An attacker can grind identities until his nodes are assigned the threshold group(s) he desires.
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If an attacker manages to control just ONE threshold group (by controlling more than the threshold percentage per group), he can halt the magical “random beacon”, effectively freezing the chain.
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Furthermore, even if a PoS protocol manages to generate internal randomness, it might still be insufficient for chain security, because PoS focuses on only the superficial role of randomness. (As you mentioned, there's no "value" moved into the system.)https://twitter.com/hugohanoi/status/1040494231528173568 …
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(Not that I think PoS can actually generate internal randomness.)
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Put another way: external source of randomness via Proof-of-Work is probably the only way to securely inject randomness into a public & distributed blockchain.
End of conversation
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