You can do much worse things in a PoS system since power in the system is tied to the asset (ETH). Ethereum DeFi toys are hacked on a daily basis and millions upon millions of dollars worth of ETH is stolen.

It's exactly why the DAO hacker was censored -- they controlled more ETH than any single account in the system.

[responding to the pre-edit question about PoW] I just did, you don't need any capital to run a node. The book documents an incident where there was majority hash-rate (miners) wanting to change the rules against the wishes of the users.

more info: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IT4s-6T__k

But at scale you need lots of nodes/computational power and therefore lots of money. It doesn’t really make a difference whether you buy graphics cards in a pow world or ethereum in a pos world, you need lots of capital to be influential.

Now if we could make it Proof of Human, one vote, one person, non-transferable, that would be true distributed consensus. Even then you would get people buying votes with advertising as we see today in “normal” elections.

> But at scale you need lots of nodes/computational power and therefore lots of money. It doesn’t really make a difference whether you buy graphics cards in a pow world or ethereum in a pos world, you need lots of capital to be influential.

You're missing the energy part of the equation (opex), that is continuously required.

> you don't need any capital to run a node

Please point me in the direction where I can find some of these free ASIC miners.....

full node != miner

Run your own full node,

easiest option: getumbrel.com

Did you mean PoS? Parent was talking about a PoW system.

Yes, editted.