> With proof of stake, you can literally throw around money to gain influence over a network.
But can't you do the same with PoW. You just throw money at minners and buy their rigs or rent them for a good premium.
But can't you do the same with PoW. You just throw money at minners and buy their rigs or rent them for a good premium.
Bitcoin needs a huge factory. ETH2 needs a billion dollars. I feel like a billion dollars could probably buy the factory you're talking about.
ETH2 also takes time to add new stakers to the network, but perhaps not as long as building the factory.
If you did this with BTC you'd cause a huge drop it the value of the network, and therefore your investment in miners
If you did this with ETH2 your investment would be destroyed by slashing, and the network might survive
... also keep in mind the Bitcoin factories already exist. You just need to buy one or two, or perhaps hack some of the mining pools.
I prefer the ETH2 semantics.
What you don't get is what comes after that.
In PoS, once you invest a billion dollars, you're set for life. In PoW, you invest a billion dollars but still have to keep investing more and more in order to survive. If you're complacent, a new upstart miner with innovative technology could swoop in one day with 10x more efficient mining method (it could take many forms, such as a closed source bitcoin node that does things much more efficiently yet still fully follows the Bitcoin protocol, or it could be a closed source hardware that they don't sell outside of their own mining operations, like Apple does with their own chips) This way the PoW network as a whole will keep evolving because of competition. In a PoS network there is no competition once you invest the billion dollars and it's a complacent network compared to a PoW network where everyone is constantly competing and comes and goes (those who can't keep up will get left out and leave). If you join a PoS network where someone has a huge stake collectively, you're basically joining a feudalist society where you're being ruled by a king. If you join a PoW network you're being ruled by entities that keep competing to show their competency. it's like the presidential election is going on for every block.