With PoW, we trust that the mining algorithm is going to take X amount of time given Y amount of computation. That arguably removes trust from people and puts it in the properties of tech.
PoS argues that PoW is just a proxy indicator of stake, where the stake is computing resources that are committed to mining. With PoS, rather than reifying your resources into CPUs that churn wastefully, we reify the resources into in-ledger coins which are held in escrow. Block-writers are selected randomly from a pool of miners which are weighted by the amount of stake in escrow. If the miner violates the protocol, they lose their escrowed stake.
So PoS moves from "trust in algorithm runtime on modern hardware" to "trust in economic game theory," I figure.
With PoW, we trust that the mining algorithm is going to take X amount of time given Y amount of computation. That arguably removes trust from people and puts it in the properties of tech.
PoS argues that PoW is just a proxy indicator of stake, where the stake is computing resources that are committed to mining. With PoS, rather than reifying your resources into CPUs that churn wastefully, we reify the resources into in-ledger coins which are held in escrow. Block-writers are selected randomly from a pool of miners which are weighted by the amount of stake in escrow. If the miner violates the protocol, they lose their escrowed stake.
So PoS moves from "trust in algorithm runtime on modern hardware" to "trust in economic game theory," I figure.