Item — HN Reader

> What you say is true for Proof-of-work: The more capital-intensive mining is, the harder the network is to attack.

Well I did say "It takes a certain amount of money $X to control 51% of a POW network." Not sure why there is an argument around PoS.

Did you mean PoS in your last sentence?

It isn't clear to me that PoS is much different, in the sense that you can imagine attacking the network by gaining a larger stake, enough to be "calling the shots on the truth" (ie silencing other stakeholders). There are other comments along these lines so I won't repeat the arguments here.

1 comments

> Did you mean PoS in your last sentence?

Totally. Apoligies.

> It isn't clear to me that PoS is much different, in the sense that you can imagine attacking the network by gaining a larger stake, enough to be "calling the shots on the truth" (ie silencing other stakeholders).

I think we agree on this one: Proof of Stake and Proof of Work are both vulnerable to their respective 51% attacks.

But they are also (more or less) equally safe: If you don't have 51% of capital at stake/mining power, you cannot attack the network.

So, all things being equal, my argument is that PoS is advantagous because it requires fewer resources.

(This is expressed for example in the fact that the block reward with PoW needs to be much higher than with PoS to re-finance the same amount of capital investment. Because if proof of stake, you also get back your original capital.)