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You can influence the chain, because that's what the chain says

原文标题：《 Proof Of Stake Wears No Clothes 》

原文作者： Jeff Schnitzer

原文编译：闵敏 & 阿剑

In the early 1990s, I regularly drove back and forth between SAN Luis Obispo and Los Angeles to visit my parents. Before podcasts and Pandora, THE streaming music service, I sometimes listened to sermons on the radio when I was bored. Well do I remember hearing a preacher on the radio, in response to a listener's question, say in his deep old voice, "How do we know that the Bible is true?" Then, without a pause of irony, he said, "We know the Bible is true... because it tells us so."

There are many concerns about the economic and environmental costs of PoW cryptographic currencies. Some suggest turning to proof of entitlement to get rid of most of the cost. This makes the same mistake as the old missionary.

Cryptographic money is essentially a list of transactions and a protocol that determines which transactions can be added to the list.

In short, the operation of the PoS system is as follows:

1. There is a list of valid transactions that determine the ownership of the token

2.< complexity>

3. The person holding the token decides which transactions are valid

You don't need to know much about the details of the PoS system to know intuitively that something is wrong. The more detailed you look, the more suspicious you become: the history of perpetual motion machines is to reduce the transparency of step two, causing investors to forget the connection between step one and step three.

Is PoS feasible?

Of course, it is feasible for some time to come and for a long time to come. It's easy to reach consensus when everyone agrees. But if you stretch the timeline long enough, it creates conflicts that are hard to resolve. Even wise and respected leaders live for only a few decades, and some die young.

PoS is essentially self-referential. It is quite possible that there will be two identical, equally effective chains, the only difference being the pledge on each chain. Since the pledge is confined to the blockchain, it cannot be used to choose between the two chains. Under the right amount of pressure, unwritten meta-consensus agreements eventually emerge to determine "which chain should we focus on". What that agreement is depends on the nature of the fork.

When does consensus fail?

One risk is that there will be bifurcations of equal power due to long-standing disputes within the community. Possible disputes include how to adjust pledge rewards, how to "fix" broken/hacked contracts, how to deal with stolen deposits, and so on.

I have no problem with ETH/ETC split. With most of the miners opting for ETH, the wounds of the split have been healed. Nowadays, ETC is far less secure than ETH and has experienced several 51% attacks. The centralization of computing power (a finite resource) creates a positive feedback loop that encourages the remaining power to abandon smaller forks.

Forking a PoS chain creates two chains, each of which will receive the approval of the majority of its own chain. This fork will go on and on endlessly. Which chain is "real"?

I think Matt Levine got it right when he said, "To some extent, the night janitor is really in control of the company." [1][2][3] Whoever has the key to the front door gains control. Whichever fork the exchange chooses will inherit the louder name, but who can guarantee that all exchanges will recognise the same fork? This can lead to chaotic and unpredictable situations.