Hypothesis: POS promotes peace and diplomacy or at least creative and less violent means of conflict resolution, while POW promotes might-makes-right violence.
Let’s say you have a wartime scenario.
2 sides. Each side wants to deplete the others’ resources (money). Let’s imagine that each side has a team dedicated to figuring out how to do this.
In a POW world, you can:
Bomb the enemy mining operations
Build up your own mining operations to drown out the enemy
In a POS world, you can:
Convince the majority of stakers to side with you
Buy more stake to drown out the enemy
Option #2 for both scenarios is the “peaceful” path. These are basically the same. It is Option #1 where we see the real difference.
Now of course not all POW mining is the same. If the mining is ASIC resistant, it would be a lot harder to know where all the miners are. They would be so distributed that you couldn’t target them effectively.
But assuming that the mining is not ASIC resistant, then it would likely make it easier for the enemy to find mining facilities. Because you would need whole facilities for mining to be profitable. And of course these facilities could be bombed and destroyed, severely crippling your enemy’s voice in the blockchain.
Similar to an ASIC resistant POW system, a POS system would be so distributed that you couldn’t target all the nodes effectively.
So the “violence” in an ASIC resistant POW or in a POS system would be dedicated to diplomacy and convincing the nodes to side with you. Propaganda, psy ops, espionage, etc. It would be a cold war instead of a hot war.
One of the premises here is that a less violent cold war is better than a more violent hot war.
I disagree that ‘bombing’ is the only violent act. Every validator on a PoS network shares his IP address.
if IP addresses point to datacenters… those can be bombed. Or the datacenter can be legally required to stop allowing customers to run your blockchain.
if IP address points to residential address, they can be swatted or otherwise terrorized. If many residents in a singke region, then that region can be bombed.
servers behind IP addresses can be DDoSd
servers behind those IPs can be targeted by malware to steal staked funds or even to make bad PoS votes to get slashed by the protocol
etc…
Any of these means to interfere with the validator will lead to the corresponding staker getting slashed/punished for becoming inactive. This is called griefing. There are countless ways to grief a stake node.
The type of computation being done (PoW vs PoS vs watching TV) does not change a computers ability to hide from the internet connected world.
The same could be said for miners in PoW, although i believe that’s not a consensus problem but rather an implementation one. I also think that in some PoS there’s no punishment needed for stopping to participate.
You misunderstand my point. You can assume that nobody exposes their IPs in the scenario I am outlining. No miner and no staker.
In that world where there are no exposed IP addresses, mining facilities are relatively easy to locate. There’s fewer of them and they are larger. You don’t hide those things easily unless it’s like Deep Underground Military Bases. But they likely aren’t because they are usually private (not State) enterprises.
In an ASIC-resistant POW network, the miners are too numerous and they’re done in any random locations. In POS networks, the nodes are too numerous and done in any location.
Your assertions hold no validity regarding the outcome of POW.
If there are indeed attacks on POW/ASIC mining facilities, it suggests that the currency possesses some inherent value.
It is illogical to squander resources in order to cripple something when you can simply take control of it and manage production through hostile means.
Throughout history, even during times of war, no one has ever suggested bombing gold mines.
Instead, they recognize the value of such resources and allocate them to benefit their citizens or fund further conflicts.
Also there are cooking digital assets backed by real gold, but why not by Bitcoin yet? I think its coming too. Bitcoin was created for banks, its genesis message clearly stated this.
Grin - people’s timechain can be imagined like gold too, but after decades
Banks are watching, it can be good that we have low market cap
Well obviously, but the facilities are likely behind enemy lines and not within your own territory. So for that reason, it’s better to just cut off their access to the resource.
Bombing a gold mine doesn’t erase the gold that is there. Bombing a crypto mining facility destroys their access to the money and also their influence on the ledger.
Is Grin less of a “bank currency” than Bitcoin? Both are not ASIC resistant on purpose. To me, that means that Grin will be mined only in mega facilities in the future
