Re:On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward [pdf]
by chrisco255 on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @12:17PM
(#26331423)
Oh I know the political implications of changing BTC are high, but the main arguments against changing anything to do with Bitcoin are its security profile. I agree that BTC is the most secure chain. But, if the mining reward dries up to the extent that it is less secure as transaction fees take dominance, then the community will have to sacrifice one of their sacred cows: 21 million supply or proof-of-work. Neither one of those are easy to change, but if necessary, it will have to.
Re:On the Instability of Bitcoin Without the Block Reward [pdf]
by DennisP on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @08:16PM
(#26337344)
Proof-of-stake has progressed quite a bit since that document was published in 2016. For example, nothing-at-stake is fixed by slashing stake when anyone submits a proof that the staker signed competing branches.
(But I agree that Bitcoin is unlikely to change.)
As opposed to Proof-of-Work, Proof-of-Stake is not as simple as it sounds. Any implementation faces a myriad of design challenges and potential attacks. Things like "nothing-at-stake", "costless simulation", "stake grinding", and "long-range attacks" [1]. And in the end, there is no objective truth about the state of the chain, as there is with PoW's simple longest chain rule.
There is nothing simple about a Bitcoin "transition" either, as should be evident from the endless blocksize debates, and resulting Bitcoin Cash chain splits. That was only about changing a single parameter. Now you're talking about changing the very essence of Bitcoin, with dozens if not hundreds more dimensions of choices and opportunities for disagreements.
[1] https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/alts.pdf