Community Trust ScoreLikely Real
Nic carter Shared: The economist repeats the lie that PoS is inherently more scalable than PoW, ignoring the fact that scalability is entirely about throughput, which is consensus agnostic.
For Clarity, Proof of Stake (PoS) protocols are a class of consensus mechanisms for blockchains that work by selecting validators in proportion to their quantity of holdings in the associated cryptocurrency.
Proof of work (PoW) is a decentralized consensus mechanism that requires members of a network to expend effort solving an arbitrary mathematical puzzle to prevent anybody from gaming the system. Proof of work is used widely in cryptocurrency mining, for validating transactions and mining new tokens.
Community Response: This idea (that PoS is inherently more scalable) is probably one of the most enduring and insidious misconceptions in the entire crypto industry, most likely stemming from Vitalik’s early defense of PoS. One small problem: it’s simply not true.
Proof of stake is indeed way more scalable. I know from a fact and personal experience this is easier to scale, cheaper to maintain and more affordable therefore more decentralized. These are facts and it can’t be hidden with bigotry.
They are not, since PoS can never be as Trustless as PoW. The correct chain can never be objectively defined, and a new entrant must trust the incumbents to provide them with the correct history of events.
The fact that I have to trust the incumbents means that PoS will never be as socially scalable as PoW, where the correct chain can independently be verified without no trust being involved.
There is one thing, you can’t do sharding specifically with PoW while keeping inflation in check as far as I can tell. Controlling the emission would be impossible in a decentralized system like that. With PoW you have to be hierarchic. Don’t see how that is a problem though.
No one has successfully done sharding at scale yet. So, I’ll reserve judgement on the relationship between consensus and sharding, but there are sharded PoW projects like Kadena.
I will withdraw my observation I was not specific enough. PoW is a broader term than what
I had in mind. There is probably no strict fundamental difference in what can strictly be done with pow and pos. Devil hides in the details.
This Nick Szabo piece on blockchains and social scalability should be mandatory reading for all journalists.
it seemed like “end game” by Vitalik shows he is throwing in the towel at PoS and relying on other layer 2 chains to scale ETH.
Sorry, that was rude, and I should have explained. POS is happening regardless. You might be thinking of changes in terms of execution sharding?
Isn’t the running joke that ETH2 (PoS) is perpetually 18 mos away? Not trying to throw stones. Only trying to make sense of all the past.
That is the joke, but I was more talking about the road map as laid out in “end game.” Nothing has changed as far as POS. As far as whether or not it’s going to happen, the merge Testnet is live and I’m staking on the Beacon Chain as we speak, so I would say it’s happening.
Bitcoins algo needs a 10 min block time to ensure security. A 10 minute block time does decrease throughput compared to PoS Throughput = (tx/block)*(block/time) = tx/time Not inherent, but to keep its security and decentralization btc must be slow. So basically inherent, right?
“That means that lots can go wrong.” That’s exactly what people want to hear about money systems.
If only they knew bitcoin isn’t about processing transactions as quickly as possible. Visa can process even more transactions than a PoS blockchain like Avalanche without needing any “consensus mechanism”. Blockchains are an inefficient way to process transactions.
Who at the Economist says this and why become interesting questions? The origin of the idea with Vitalik has an easy explanation as to why he created ETH. He was impatient, saw the up side and he did not care. I think the answer persists. So human. So not Satoshi.
I can’t wait for ETH to go PoS (whenever that is) so we can all get out of the system without paying up to $150 in gas for one transaction
The Economist is less and less serious of a publication anymore. Not just around crypto. I cancelled my subscription a few years ago. A shame really, they used to be a very valuable resource.
Bitcoin scaled from 1/5000 pizza to >$1 trillion in 13 years without extreme regulatory overview but The Economist thinks the fintech bros’ gobbledygook is worth giving some print real estate.
