Crypto Academy Season 3 Beginners' course - Task 4: Different types of Consensus Mechanisms - For Prof. @sapwood

Hello Steemians,

Question 2

What is the difference between PoS & DPoS? Advantages & Disadvantages? Name a few Blockchain projects which use the DPoS consensus mechanism and indicate the scaling capacity?

Answer

The differences between PoS and DPoS
PoS	DPoS
PoS is a consensus model that uses an election process where a random node with the highest staked amount will be chosen to validate the next block	DPoS is a decentralized consensus model that allows the users to vote for the computers that they think are qualified to run the network
How much you have Staked into the network will determine your chances of being selected in a node to validate the next block	A fixed amount amount of delegate from 21-101 computers which gets the most vote are delegated to run the network, they are called Witnesses
Proof of Stake uses transaction fees as a reward instead of additional crypto being created as the reward	Witnesses have the right to create blocks to add to the blockchain and prohibit malicious parties from participating. They take turns producing blocks in a random manner every 10 seconds
PoS is the idea that the holders of the system should have the responsibility of securing the network	DPoS is the idea of appointing someone else to secure the network on your behalf (Delegates).

Advantages of PoS

• Validators are usually likely to do their work efficiently, because if they try to harm the network they might loose the coin they have staked.
• It does not so much energy to secure it's blockchain

Disadvantages of PoS

• If a single person gets 51% of the staked assets, that person can control transactions to his own benefits in the blockchain.
• It's difficult for the average investors to become validators.

Advantages of DPoS

• It promotes decentralization and equally empowers it users because anyone can become a delegate, and no large mining pools are needed to validate the blocks
• The delegates usually do their jobs efficiently because any delegate who misbehave or constantly fails to produce a block will loose his/her reputations and then replaced by another delegate.
• It offers high performance and solves the energy consumption problem PoW is having by removing the intense mining competition.
• The delegates are trusted not to act maliciously or cause any harm because some amount of funds from the delegates are deposit for commitment purposes.
• It provides high transaction rates, as it can process up to 10 transactions per second

Disadvantages of DPoS

• Stakeholder's voting strength are determined by the amount of tokens they hold, which means that some stakeholders have more influence than others on the network
• DPoS is equally exposed to the 51% attack, because it inherent in the nature of consensus that any computer with 51% of the supply which is the majority, can be able to take over the network.

Names of a few Blockchain Projects that uses DPoS

Link

Blockchain Projects that uses DPoS includes:

• TRON with 27 super reps
• EOS with 21 block producers
• Lisk with 101 delegates

Link

Conclusion
DPoS is considered by many to be a more efficient and democratic version of the preceding PoS algorithm. It is also used as an alternative to the energy intensive PoW algorithm and it's growing among cryptocurrencies. I find the lecture very informative.

Best Regard
Prof. @sapwood