Proof of stake
Proof of Stake (German for “ proof of entitlement” or “proof of proportion”; PoS for short ) describes a procedure with which a blockchain network reaches a consensus on which participant is allowed to generate the next block. A weighted random selection is used, whereby the weights of the individual participants are determined from the duration of participation and / or their ability (the “ stake ”). In contrast to the Proof of Work used by Bitcoin and Ethereum , Proof of Stake manages without time and energy-intensive mining and it is not possible to take over the network by owning computing power alone ("51% attack").
The so-called nothing-at-stake problem represents a fundamental difficulty of the proof-of-stake method . This states that in the case of several competing branches of a blockchain, the producers of blocks have the incentive to create blocks on all of these branches , since this parallel creation does not represent any significant additional effort, unlike the proof-of-work. If a large number of stakeholders do this, there can be no consensus on the “correct” branch. One of the ways to counter the nothing-at-stake problem would be to sanction parallel production.
Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS)
A well-known further development is the consensus algorithm Delegated Proof of Stake invented by the American blockchain developer Dan Larimer (German for " Delegated Proof of Stake "; DPoS for short ).
With this variant, the weighting in the selection of claims is not related to one's own share of the network resources, but representatives are chosen by the shareholders of a blockchain who are allowed to sign the next blocks in the chain. The right to sign blocks is delegated to these elected representatives. It is important to understand that no tokens are sent to these elected representatives, just a stake-weighted vote on the choice of block producers.
Delegated Proof of Stake is used as a consensus algorithm by some of the largest and most active blockchains in the world, including EOS , Steem and Tronix .
Web links
- Vitalik Buterin : What Proof of Stake Is And Why It Matters In: Bitcoin Magazine , August 26, 2013
- Dan Larimer : What is DPOS - Delegated Proof of Stake? In: Youtube / Bitshares , July 21, 2014
Individual evidence
- ↑ https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/Proof-of-Stake-FAQs
- ↑ Ryan Smith: What is Delegated Proof of Stake? Exploring the Consensus Algorithm. Coincentral, July 3, 2018, accessed March 14, 2019 .
- ↑ Steve Walters: Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) - Total Beginners Guide. Coinbureau, August 20, 2018, accessed March 14, 2019 .
- ↑ Blockchain Activity Matrix. Blocktivity, accessed March 14, 2019 .