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
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.
-
-
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.
-
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.)
-
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.
-
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.
-
Take off those glasses, you’re talking nonsense now. Good night.
-
I'm speaking objectively, no colored glasses here

-
Bottom line is this: PoS provides no real breakthrough over traditional BFT systems & are constrained by the same CAP theorem. PoS is just re-inventing the wheel all over again, using a different language. Bitcoin is able to "cheat" CAP via PoW - that's the real breakthrough.
-
By "cheating" I mean Bitcoin doesn't _really_ give you the C in CAP - consistency. But it's close.
- 1 more reply
New conversation -
-
-
I'd say this might be _slightly_ better than blindly choosing liveness over safety. It’s still bad, but you pick the lesser of two evils.
-
Essentially, Tendermint’s preference for "safety over liveness" eliminates (b) but the risk of (a) is now multiplied several folds. My larger point remains: not as robust as PoW.
-
You’re closer to truth but you need to take off your pow colored glasses first.
-
Bitcoin currently chooses liveness, which is the worse choice of the two. After a network partition heals you’ll likely end up with two forks and two groups that disagree about which chain should be called Bitcoin, or, it will shed a large fraction of people who finally “get it”
- End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.
