Good discussion about the pros and cons of proof of stake vs proof of work in these articles and the comments:
https://medium.com/@hugonguyen/proof-of-stake-the-wrong-engineering-mindset-15e641ab65a2 …
https://medium.com/@hugonguyen/proof-of-stake-private-keys-attacks-and-unforgeable-costliness-the-unsung-hero-5caca70b01cb …
via @hugohanoi
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I gave you all the resources you need, maybe you should read the spec or whitepaper, esp Ethan Buchman's thesis. I could keep spoon feeding you facts about Tendermint, like how it doesn't fork with merely a network partition, but it's time you start chewing your own food.
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> and assumes that 1/3+ must be "bad"? // That's not an assumption, that's just a result of the facts of the consensus algorithm. It says that a fork won't happen if +1/3 *aren't* bad. You've completely misunderstood even the most basic logical statement about BFT/Tendermint.
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Ok I re-read, so Tendermint won't fork in the case of a network partition taking away 1/3+ of the active validator set, because you simply choose to HALT the chain instead of continuing on with the forks. (I admit I don't always remember which PoS implementation does what).
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But by choosing to halt, you’re just trading one problem for another. If you would have chosen liveness instead, then you’ll have a problem with (b), but now instead of (b) your chain faces the risk of regularly starting & stopping.
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CAP says you need to choose, there’s no way around it. For financial blockchains the right choice is to halt at least temporarily. Bitcoin chooses “liveness” but really it’s just asking for mass chaos once the partition heals.
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I disagree. It might appear chaotic but PoW provides a significant breakthrough over traditional BFT systems in this aspect: the chain-split healing process is deterministic, automatable & not corruptible by humans. (Not to mention how PoW shields you from long-range attacks.)
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You just agreed that safety is the better choice. You can have even better chain healing with PoS. The best part of PoW is it’s distribution mechanism, but that’s been exploited to capacity now.
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No, I only agreed that choosing safety over liveness is probably the correct choice *in PoS or traditional BFT systems*. Not in Bitcoin. Because of PoW, Bitcoin can afford to have both.
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Hey, I shouldn't be so aggro when you took the time to respond. If you post a Github issue with questions about the algorithm I'll be happy to respond with answers to any of your questions.
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How about provide an actual argument or point out how I misunderstood Tendermint? do you deny that your "external process" requires pausing the chain for an undetermined amount of time, and assumes that 1/3+ must be "bad"?