[proxynoproxy]

Because it’s not external referencing. It’s all on chain, and any external price of tokens is all in humans minds. Of course, true of Bitcoin too. However, energy is the external thing that links time and computation to the chain data. Really, Bitcoin PoW is an amazing discovery. Proof of Stake is self serving self referencial database.

Bitcoin through Proof of Work is a global computational one-way valve for a ledger, which enables a fuzzy decentralized time, by which we can enforce digital scarcity! The ledger record becomes the digital commodity. What an age!

Proof of stake ends up as chain where 26 dudes in discord can freeze accounts, lock the chain, etc, etc. it’s not really different than 26 banks doing the same. And really you have to ask yourself about the purpose of any of this if you are trading 26 banks for 26 dudes in a discord.

[keeganpoppen]

Bitcoin proof of work is both the sine qua non and the ne plus ultra of the entire sphere… and i say this as an enjoyer of all the fancy math et al. in the space. it is genuinely a monumental achievement… one whose value… is indeterminate (at best; and worst). and i wouldn’t dare opine on that point, because i’m “from Switzerland” on this. but that it opened a mathemeatical pandora’s box is undeniable. when i read the original Bitcoin paper (about a year after publication) i was suffused with the feeling that something fundamental was “discovered” in a way i’ve only felt a handful of times in my entire life… (and then i spent all my BTC on drugs)

[mistercheph]

+1 blockchains and cryptocurrencies are super interesting and valuable IMO outside of the present speculative lotteries people are playing.

But I suspect even more interesting things than the current applications will come out of the opening of a bridge between pure computation and the material world over the next decades/centuries/millenia.

[everfree]

> Proof of Stake is self serving self referencial database.

Proof of Work is much more self-serving than Proof of Stake, as it demands external expenditures to keep itself running. PoS can perform the same job (running a blockchain) without demanding that the world drop what it's doing to contribute electricity to one massive global tragedy of the commons.

Being self-referential is a beneficial feature, not a bug.

> Proof of stake ends up as chain where 26 dudes in discord can freeze accounts, lock the chain, etc, etc.

That's where Proof of Work ends up, not Proof of Stake. PoW's economies of scale always eventually result in a network controlled by a handful of massive mining operations running at razor-thin margins. The "26 dudes in discord" that people talk about are the CEOs of large mining warehouses with custom chips that make it impossible for home miners to break even.

In contrast, with a well-designed Proof of Stake system, people can contribute by staking at home and running mini-PCs in closets at edge locations. It has the potential to remain a much more grassroots network with less concentration of wealth, if the initial distribution is relatively fair. There is no economy of scale and ideally no concentration of wealth over time - as everyone earns the same percent returns in staking.

[proxynoproxy]

Haha, no. Like in sui where the validators halted and froze? Or Solana where dishonest stalkers rigged the delegated staking auction and stole from other stakers?

What you are repeating is the same PoS nonsense. Get out of here. Eth drove off a cliff when it went PoS. It’s going to zero vs Bitcoin, like every other PoS (or alt) coin. It’s all just PoS cartels. Meanwhile, many people have their “edge” BitAxe earning Bitcoin.

nb: PoS can never really be fairly distributed. It’s printed out of nothing to enrich the founders. The billionaires were dumping Sol on retail last cycle. It can never escape this. Eth was “premined”.

[kinakomochidayo]

Ethereum is doing just fine after going PoS, in fact, it’s much more secure than when it was PoW from a security budget standpoint while achieving less inflation compared to Bitcoin, and will continue to remain secure compared to Bitcoin’s critical security budget issue as block rewards go down. It’s also special compared to other chains in that it started out as PoW for at least 7 years.

Bitcoin has ASIC monopoly and conflicts of interest with core devs connected to companies dipping into mining.

Solana and other chains are VC fueled crap though, I agree.

[proxynoproxy]

And yet, every ETH is worth much less sats today then when it was PoW. Remember the flipping, lol.

All the yields in the world don’t mean nothin’ if the value of the capital is not preserved. To say nothing about “security”. I would argue the complexity introduced by the beacon chain mechanism reduces security… but it’s debatable.

You can keep beating the failing PoS drum or you can actually preserve your capital where other grubby humans can’t mess with it. I know what I’m doing.

[everfree]

ETH price has been performing poorly lately, therefore PoS is "failing"?

That seems like quite the leap in logic to me.

I'd like to mention by the way that Bitcoin has had two egregious bugs that caused network downtime - once in 2010 and again in 2013. Ethereum has had 100% uptime since inception.

Part of this is due to Bitcoin having one reference implementation and Ethereum having five, so it's impossible for the entire network to run into the exact same software bug.

[proxynoproxy]

Yes, It’s been performing badly since PoS.

Ugh. Satoshi wrote about this. Lockstep. Single Client = Good. multiple client = menace. I’m ignoring Knots because it’s in the menace category.

Ethereum ignored this wise wisdom and ended up with 5. It’s no good, but in up is down land aka ETH, it’s celebrated. You can’t convince me otherwise.

[everfree]

Sui didn't halt because of PoS, it halted because of poor coding practices. Solana isn't rigged because it's PoS, it's rigged because its token is distributed mostly to insiders.

> What you are repeating is the same PoS nonsense. Get out of here.

That's rude and unhelpful.

> Eth drove off a cliff when it went PoS.

ETH is the only PoS token that's been performing relatively poorly lately, and it's still in the #2 spot by market cap. (And #1, surpassing Bitcoin, by most other network metrics).

> The billionaires were dumping Sol on retail last cycle.

Because they gave themselves a bunch of Sol. Fairly distributed PoS coins are not like this.

> Eth was “premined”.

103 million of the current 120 million ETH (89%), you or I or anyone could have bought at the public token presale or mined since then. No one person owns more than 0.25% of the supply. That's hardly "premined".

Compare that to Bitcoin, where Satoshi mined 5% of the supply while the network was little more than a whitepaper and a repo. That's 20x the largest holder of ETH, and it's a real risk that those keys come alive again some time in the future and cause a panic in the markets.

[proxynoproxy]

60% of eth was printed from nothing and sold to insiders on day for Bitcoin!

It’s all awful and inexcusable!

(Edit for 60%)

[everfree]

See my other reply. The coins were not sold to insiders, and your percentage is wrong on top of that.

[proxynoproxy]

Updated to 60%. Your right I should have verified this.

[throwaway290]

PoW is supported by two things, belief that waste of energy is valuable and criminals using it to workaround sanctions.

[proxynoproxy]

It’s more that waste energy allows one way process, which is valuable. Valves. Diodes. One doesn’t complain about waste heat from computation in general, if that computation has value.

And the second part - you won’t understand because you prefer authority to set monetary policy. The history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.

[throwaway290]

It's a waste because the energy is not spent creating real value. If energy spend's goal is to make energy spend valuable and nothing else, it's a waste and evolutionary deadend. Your example is wrong because in diodes and valves waste heat is a byproduct of getting real value not the goal (when heating is the goal and provides actual value of people not dying from cold that is again real value).

> And the second part - you won’t understand because you prefer authority to set monetary policy

You will discover that monetary policy is always set by someone one way or another. Choose if you want it to be democratically elected to serve you government or randos who happen to have a bunch of BTC from selling drugs to kids on black market or scamming and ransomwaring people (this is it's biggest use case).

[proxynoproxy]

It’s not wrong, you just don’t like it, don’t get it. It’s ok; you will eventually. Everyone does.

In the scenario I trust the later more than the former! And that’s fine, we have different perspectives.

You wanna shut us down, I want you to ignore us, See the difference?

[throwaway290]

> In the scenario I trust the later more than the former

You made your choice, that's fine, just don't pretend it's virtuous.