Re:Ethereum Sharding FAQ
by cocktailpeanuts on Wednesday April 25, 2018 @04:51PM
(#16926016)
History has shown us that humans don't always act economically or rationally. So nothing is impossible.
Re:Ethereum Sharding FAQ
by profalseidol on Thursday April 26, 2018 @12:59AM
(#16928920)
In PoS, it is a known assumption that if the majority of nodes act rationally, then so be it. This is an issue that is out of scope.
Humans can be rational or irrational. That is how they are born. So far, we can only make tools and books to prevent irrationality.
Re:Ethereum Sharding FAQ
by cocktailpeanuts on Thursday April 26, 2018 @01:15AM
(#16928992)
Do you think PoS is as safe as PoW when dealing with irrationality?
Yes, there are principled ways to model these things. You can compare the byzantine fault tolerance threshold across PoW and PoS. You can compare the cost of deviating from the Nash equilibrium, and calculate how much an attacker needs to spend to deviate in return for every dollar of damage he causes.
Proof of Stake strategy is to make it where attacks on the blockchain are impossible in the economic sense. Proof of work strategy is making the attack infeasible by making the work required impossibly large.
Now is PoS possible? No idea. That possible fork attack seems like an impossible barrier to overcome. But we will see.