Learning Blockchain: Proof of Stake

Hey people!

Back today to talk about the Proof of Stake!

The principle is as follows: you put part of your corners at stake, which gives you the right to become a validator in the network. Thus, you can "forge" a new block if you are selected for it.

Of course, if only the at stake amount were considered, only the wealthiest would be chosen. That is why other criteria come into play according to the Blockchains. The "on stake" duration of the bet is a criteria that can be taken into account: the more time you have put your bet in play, the greater your chances of being selected. When you are selected, this time is reset to zero. The PeerCoin Blockchain is one of the first projects to have implemented this system.

Other methods allow randomizing the selection by including the amount at stake. (Blackcoin, Nxt)

This system makes it possible both to encourage "Stakers" by paying them the fees for transactions, or a % of their stake, but also to discourage them from acting dishonestly since their stake is at stake and can therefore be lost.
Second point and far from being negligible, the PoS is a consensus that would improve the performance of the Blockchain. We could go from a Bitcoin 7 or Ethereum 20 to several thousand. By way of comparison, Visa can make 24,000 seconds.

However, one of the main issues is: how to ensure a good distribution of the token at the beginning? Indeed, a misallocation would lead to inequality that would be detrimental to the token-economy of a project.
Some blockchains started with a PoW and then shifted to the PoS to avoid this.

As mentioned in the last post, the Blockchain Ethereum has plans to forge into a PoS system, but no date has been given yet. This would reduce the energy costs associated with mining the Proof of Work. Migration is expected to take place by 2020.

Other consensus has been developed to solve the problem of scalability of PoW, we will see it in a future post!