• Cris@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    Does anyone know I’d proof of stake ended up being better than proof of work? I dont follow crypto but kept hearing that was supposed to improve things

    Crypto is a big deal because it enables grifting and crime, but with how shit payment processors are and their tendency to use their position for censorship, crypto actually would be a potential way of solving that problem IF it werent ludicrously volatile and wasteful. But I have no idea if those problems could really ever be solved, or any progress has been made on those fronts

    • red_tomato@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Proof of Stake and Proof of Work are two different ways of electing who should append the blockchain with new transactions.

      Proof of Work: the one who can waste most energy fastest is most likely to be elected.

      Proof of Stake: the one with most money is most likely to be elected.

      It’s a bit oversimplified, but that’s the general idea.

      • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        Proof of Stake: the one with most money is most likely to be elected.

        This is misleading. Winning the validation election doesn’t give you more power.

        The one who is most dishonest gets their stake burned.

        • lad@programming.dev
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          9 days ago

          How is that misleading, they said nothing about power or being dishonest?

          Also, proof of stake sounds like rich get richer scheme (but that was already true for proof of work for a long time)

          • Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world
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            9 days ago

            How is that misleading

            The word elected implies power. Having more money staked doesn’t give you any more abilities over a capital poor user.

            proof of stake sounds like rich get richer scheme

            Like all capitalism. An interest bearing bank account is a rich get richer scheme.

            In PoS you do still have to do a bit of work for your money (hardware, power, network connection, verification).

    • ThrowawayPermanente@sh.itjust.works
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      10 days ago

      Yes, Ethereum has been using PoS successfully for over three years and they’re not the only major blockchain to do so. PoS works great these days, still using PoW in 2026 is a deliberate choice.

    • magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      10 days ago

      IMO xmr kinda saved proof of work by optimising their algo for consumer grade CPUs.

      CPU mining is much less econimcal than GPU because you can’t fit as many CPUs on a single system. Plus server grade CPUs with lots of smol cores instead of a few big ones hurts it too.

      Makes it hard for anyone other than nerds with am extra PC to make money mining, and most of those guys won’t be purposely picking a geographic location with the cheapest/most environmentally harmful electricity source. (More nerds live off of nuclear/solar than datacenters full of miners do)