From Coindesk
Is ethereum's biggest future upgrade "fundamentally vulnerable?"Read more: https://www.coindesk.com/fundamentally-vulnerable-ethereums-casper-tech-takes-criticism-curacao/That was the claim put forward by distributed systems expert and founding VMware researcher Dahlia Malkhi on Friday, who used those exact words to describe ethereum's Casper protocol at Financial Cryptography 2018 in Curacao.
During a keynote presentation, Malkhi's covered blockchain through the lens of a long-studied area of computer science that explores how nodes come to agreement. Still, it was her critical remarks on Casper, an upgrade that has promised to introduce a better, greener algorithm for the ethereum blockchain, that perhaps drew the most notice.
Unlike bitcoin's pioneering proof-of-work system whereby miners expend real electricity and energy to verify blocks of transactions, proof-of-stake offers a kind of virtual mining, where the coins themselves are locked up (like capital in physical miners) and then perform computations.
As such, proponents say proof-of-stake will have the same theoretical benefit to the system, without real-world power costs and environmental issues.
But while the idea's opposition has been just as fierce, Malkhi's comments mark perhaps the first time a renowned computer science researcher has weighed in on the debate.
She told the audience:
"I think proof-of-stake is fundamentally vulnerable. You're giving authority to a group to call the shots [...] In my opinion, it's giving power to people who have lots of money.
Yet, she softened the blow, adding that she believes Casper has led to "interesting" research that's fueled growing interest and innovation in the field of distributed systems.
Well it's a good thing this is being caught and addressed now rather than later. In my opinion this is a perfect example of the open source code paradigm at it's finest. A closed source project would have never had the scrutiny put on their work prior to release.
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I prefer PoW as it is right now. Both have their disadvantages, but I would rather have a high electricity consumption than a network that is controled by whales.
I believe the only sustainable way to PoS would be if you could stake a basket of various cryptos, until then I am vary wary of PoS.
Problem is whales controls electricity lol
yeah but its harder to get your hands on mining equipment than on coins.
I believe ETH is starting its walk... has a long road ahead. I am investor for a long term.
Yeah you never know with crypto it can be gone overnight but so can the usd. Its all about trusting other people no matter the fiat, thank you for sharing because I would of never seen this.
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