Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by Polygator 1864 days ago
The justification is that contrarily to PoW, where there are economies of scale on computing power, PoS power scales linearly with your stake.

Mining has been concentrated in the hands of a few gigantic mining pools for a while, and PoS will actually make Ethereum more democratic. Again, this is based on documentation, there might be unforeseen consequences

2 comments

Anyone can mine Bitcoin, the rich are the only people in control of Ethereum transactions.

Unforseen? This has been known before the miners eliminated the soft cap on EIP 669.

There are no economies of scale in PoW. At least for longer term. Cost of energy rises locally the more you use it. Cheap energy is somewhat equally distributed around the globe, which ensures geographical decentralization.
Energy prices aren't really distributed equally around the world:

https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/

This has more to do with electricity demand. It's important to understand the relationship between energy price vs. population density and standard of living. Energy is always cheapest where population density and standard of living are the lowest. That's why bitcoin mining will find it's way to remote sources of natural energy.
That has nothing to do with economies of scale.