undefined | Better HN

0 pointsivanbakel5y ago0 comments

What stops chain forks to begin with? This isn't a flaw that's limited to PoS.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

gruez5y ago· 2 in thread

I think GP's point is that in the event of a fork, in a PoW fork miners have to choose to either mine for chain A or chain B, whereas with PoS stakers can choose to stake for both. This is bad, because either side can use their staking power to disrupt the other chain, by doing double spend attacks or refusing to confirm transactions. On top of that, staking is free to do, so you don't even have to expend resources to pull off such an attack, whereas with mining you have to spend real world resources to pull it off.

shawnz5y ago

This is the point of slashing, to prevent the same coins from being staked on multiple chains at the same time. To stake you need to issue proofs of the stake which can be used to slash you on other chains.

nightpool5y ago

Thank you, this is a good description of the issue! This does seem like a complicated problem to solve, but I'm not necessarily convinced that one set of incentives is always worse or better—aren't there some situations where you do want to import the existing set of "stakes" to gain adoption?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse