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Proof of Stake: How I Learned to Love Weak Subjectivity | Ethereum Foundation Blog

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Proof of stake continues to be one of the most controversial discussions in the cryptocurrency space. Although the idea has many undeniable benefits, including efficiency, a larger security margin and future-proof immunity to hardware centralization concerns, proof of stake algorithms tend to be substantially more complex than proof of work-based alternatives, and there is a large amount of skepticism that proof of stake can work at all, particularly with regard to the supposedly fundamental "nothing at stake" problem. As it turns out, however, the problems are solvable, and one can make a rigorous argument that proof of stake, with all its benefits, can be made to be successful - but at a moderate cost. The purpose of this post will be to explain exactly what this cost is, and how its impact can be minimized. First, an introduction. The purpose of a consensus algorithm, in general, is to allow for the secure updating of a state according to some specific state transition rules, where

Proof of stake continues to be one of the most controversial discussions in the cryptocurrency space. Although the idea has many undeniable benefits, including efficiency, a larger security margin and future-proof immunity to hardware centralization concerns, proof of stake algorithms tend to be substantially more complex than proof of work-based alternatives, and there is a large amount of skepticism that proof of stake can work at all, particularly with regard to the supposedly fundamental "nothing at stake" problem. As it turns out, however, the problems are solvable, and one can make a rig

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