[leppr]

> Of course, someone will then create an escrow service that gives you the opportunity to dispute the transaction, in return for a small transaction fee. Maybe they’ll even offer to let you buy things in Bitcoin and pay them back later in cash, and charge you interest. I bet they could add in a rewards program...

...and you're back at square one ?

No: from a monolithic, impenetrable system you get an environment which favors competition. That's a win.

[TeMPOraL]

Which briefly favours competition, until the dust settles and new monopolies protected by necessary anti-fraud regulations emerges. Except this new-old state is built on a framework of exponential energy waste that powers cryptocurrencies. It would be, to put it lightly, not a better place to be in.

[leppr]

> Except this new-old state is built on a framework of exponential energy waste that powers cryptocurrencies.

Few in the cryptocurrency community, except the so-called "Bitcoin maximalists", believe Proof of Work will survive as the dominant consensus algorithm.

What's more likely to be widely adopted is a Proof of Stake [1], or Proof of Space [2] system.

[1]: Snow White: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/919.pdf, Ouroboros: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/889.pdf, Algorand: https://people.csail.mit.edu/nickolai/papers/gilad-algorand-...

[2]: Chia: https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/893.pdf, SpaceMesh: https://spacemesh.io/assets/built/whitepaper1.2.pdf

[TeMPOraL]

I keep hearing that, and yet it doesn't happen. Did anyone ever actually demonstrate that PoS (either one) can give the same network safety guarantees as PoW.

[leppr]

Check the "Simulation" part of the Snow White paper I linked above for instance[1]. You're right to ask that, because indeed most Proof of Stake algorithms either have weaker[2] or slower[1] safety guarantees.

[1]: https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/919.pdf#section.5

[2]: https://docs.zilliqa.com/whitepaper.pdf