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Comment by wmf | Hacker News Reader

Or many people independently made the obvious observation that it's now possible to maintain a blockchain without wasting energy.

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Yup. Ethereum is now ruled by the riches people in that network. Sounds an awful lot like legacy financial networks that are also run by the rich.

The question is, can a truly decentralized blockchain maintain its security against all adversaries without proof of work?

Wait, why wouldn't that be true for Bitcoin too? Surely the folks who can afford the most Asics can exert the most control...

Both Ethereum and Bitcoin are subject to basic laws of capital... The rich were always going to benefit the most.

Bitcoin miners do not control the network. People that run bitcoin nodes do.

Full nodes do, sure. But the point stands. Who controls which blocks are proposed and validated? Whoever can buy the most nodes and miners.

If you had that many miners. You'd benefit more from mining then destroying the network. It's effectively financially impossible to attack the network through mining. Its the whole reason PoW is used since energy tethers bitcoin within the realm oh physic. Real world limitations are required to produce digital scarcity.

The nodes are pretty much useless without miners... Ofc they can pass historical records around and transactions that never happen.

Not true. First off, any number of miners could exist and the difficulty adjustment keeps the blockchain growing at a steady rate.

Independent, easy & decentralized nodes are almost all that matter.

You are mistaking two different types of consensus. Social one: we are running this software, which encodes particular rules; we have a roadmap; we are sharing similar values. Technical one: transaction A came before transaction B. Proof of Stake is responsible for technical consensus and nothing else.

Your statements are of low resolution.

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