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by kybernetikos 1884 days ago
> the means of making new coins tomorrow are intrinsically tied to owning coins today by the protocol itself.

It's not a shocking economic situation that you can use capital to acquire more capital. I don't know exactly what equilibrium the long term staking rewards will tend to, but it's not very different from interest - where for nearly no risk your capital lodged with a bank increases. The other side is that in a healthy financial system, locking money up has a cost too, so it's appropriate to recompense those who do.
1 comments
jude- 1884 days ago
I'm talking about the impact of tying coin ownership to coin production on the chain's resiliency, not the morality of earning interest.
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kybernetikos 1883 days ago
And you don't accept the argument that it increases resiliency?

I found Vitalik's arguments quite persuasive.

https://vitalik.ca/general/2020/11/06/pos2020.html

Another angle is that with the arrival of hashrate markets, a PoW miner can attack a blockchain that they have negligable investment in. In PoS that's not possible. You can't attack a PoS chain without a large investment locked into it.

You seem to be warning of various bad effects that we haven't seen in fiat currencies, despite the fact that interest is analogous to staker rewards. For example, the fact that I don't sell someone with EUR my USD without taking into account the interest that EUR can earn vs USD has not directly led to either currency becoming unreasonably expensive to acquire.

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jude- 1883 days ago
I see that Vitalik conveniently left out the part where PoS breaks down if you hack a staker's node and destroy their coins (either by knocking it offline or by forcing it equivocate -- both are slashable offenses). That is far, far, FAR cheaper than trying to buy your way in.

> You seem to be warning of various bad effects that we haven't seen in fiat currencies, despite the fact that interest is analogous to staker rewards.

Except, I'm not. PoS and fiat currencies have very little in common. If PoS was a fiat currency, then the people who staked more of it would not only get more interest yield, but also get to collectively decide who else gets to spend their money, how much they receive, and when (i.e. by deciding which transactions get included and which do not). This is a far, far worse outcome.

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