this thread may be of interest: https://twitter.com/lightcoin/status/1355988144844394498

"power" actually means tons of electronics and access to energy to run them and a good internet connection. Physical security. Mining hasn't been profitable for the last 6 months and lots of miners shut and liquidated and stuff.

Meanwhile, staking takes about 5 seconds, just signing a transaction.

And likewise, taking the whole network down, 5 seconds.

Taking the bitcoin network down. Still trying and there's more enemies now than there ever has been.

Power and equipment requires more work to get, maintain, and move out of the "position" should you want to exit. At scale, it's a heck of a lot of real world and varied work. Yet the barrier to entry into PoW mining is relatively low.

With PoS, I don't need to do much except possess (or acquire) the underlying token (and usually more of the token than any outside, non-cantilionaire would possess).

Perhaps most importantly, both systems require anchoring into reality with time. PoW can use the work to gauge time. PoS has no such feature to gauge time so at best it requires voting on time which is self-referential and isn't an anchor into reality at all. It's like anchoring a boat to itself - fine only if the seas are unrealistically calm.

I'm not an expert on proof of stake but one mistake (not saying you are saying this) people make with PoW is they think the miners set the rules. They don't. The node operators set the rules. My understanding of PoS is that the validators set the rules so PoS is more like the current money system where the powerful/wealthy/banks set the rules vs. the plebs. Running a bitcoin node is not hard or expensive.

PoS is about having a billion to buy the factory, lay back, and make all the decisions without doing much else. The ones who already have the money will hoard power (in the non-electricity sense) around them. They will use this to make more money, buy up more, and centralize the operation even more. As most coin supplies are limited, a majority is a majority; and if you control it, nobody else will get into the role of having more. (Stock companies work like this as well: selling minority stakes but making sure others never reach voting power). It's a means to make sure those who have control will keep it.

PoW is about actually gathering the wood and building the fence. Of course, you can also buy more power, but so can someone else; power isn't coin supply. Also, a consensus mechanism makes sure that even if you have a good chunk of the supply, you're not actually controlling it; and because power is NOT coin supply, you can just cut off the majority producer if they do something funny. This has long been debated about bitcoin: what f a state actor drops a load of energy into mining to control the network in a 51% attack? Well, the 49% could just split from the network, declare whatever that 51% actor does "not real bitcoin", and then watch how that state fork does.

Great question! This one had me scratching my head for several years and delayed my getting into Bitcoin, so I'll see if you I can save you the trouble and confusion in this post.

First, this episode of the Bitcoin Dad Pod is what finally made it click for me, I would highly recommend giving it a listen.

TLDR: Power vs coins is the wrong way to frame it. In PoW you trust the constraints of thermodynamics and probability. In PoS you trust the honor of those with the money.

Full Explaination: Essentially, the idea of PoW being who has more power and PoS being who has more coins is an oversimplification of how it functions, although obviously no one blames you for the confusion, as it's an easy mistake. Although in PoW you can 51% with enough ASICs and in PoS you can 51% with enough coins, the true difference exists in what happens while each protocol is operating normally, ie, when no 51% attack is being preformed.

In PoW we achieve decentralization by requiring every miner to put a hash with a certain number of zeros on each block. This is a requirement enforced by the nodes, ensuring that a certain amount of work must be put in to count a block. If a block does not meet these requirements then the nodes will reject it and wait for another miner to broadcast a block.

In PoS, the nodes don't have any such requirement. All that the network asks of stakers is that they lock up a certain amount of their coins and continue to produce blocks when it is their turn. Essentially, you trust that those with the money to stake coins have an incentive to not overtake the network, censor transactions, etc.

Thus, we have a distinct disconnect. PoW has distinct requirements imposed by the nodes to ensure decentralization and non-censorship, while PoS nodes set no requirements. Granted, you coins can get slashed under PoS, but that is only in the case where either your staking node goes offline for too long, or if you try to send out two blocks at the same time. Neither of those ensure decentralization in the same manner as PoW though.

PoW vs PoS is a very complex topic though, and I would encourage you to research it more. But at the end of the day, they are dramatically different protocols, making it so that "PoS is PoW but coins instead of power" is somewhat of a mischaracterization.

This post in meme form:

Proof of work is infinitely preferable

PoW can have PoS like impact over TIME (given a negative view on human factors). Ie if you HODL you get more spending power for not doing much and this can compound, but with Bitcoins PoW is exposed to ENTROPY during time in a PHYSICAL way which PoS is not... PoS is VIRTUALISED and ENTROPY, therefore long term decentralisation, can be REDUCED over TIME (governance, control, RAID)... Bitcoin PoW is fundamentally linked to the environment with ENERGY (infrastructure, natural resources) so ENTROPY should keep the distribution of bitcoin decentralised at a level that MATCHES that or the REAL WORLD.

How about PoC? Is it about who has a better installation/location?

Best example of PoS is the current USD system. I guess if that is sufficient for someone then bitcoin has nothing to offer them, and neither does any PoS shitcoin.