Vitalik Buterin: PoS is more efficient and secure than PoW

The pros and cons of Proof of Work (PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) are often discussed in the crypto community. Recently, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin talked about the advantages of PoS over PoW in a podcast, claiming that PoS is much more efficient than PoW.

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Buterin pointed out that currently, the general approach is to start with a new PoS chain and see if it can work independently. Once this is feasible, developers will plan to conduct a fusion so that the account balances of everything such as contract code and contract storage can be transferred to the PoS chain at once. Vitalk further stated that the PoW chain will eventually die.

Buterin has also pointed out in several interviews that PoS implementations are difficult to attack because the cost of attacking it is higher than attacking any PoW chain. In addition, PoS implementations will remove the mining process from Ethereum using alternative verification and confirmation methods.

PoS is also more environmentally friendly than PoW, considering that there is no excessive computation in PoS. However, in PoS, there is always the problem that the initial token holders have no incentive to send their tokens to a third party. In addition, both systems have some common vulnerabilities, such as being vulnerable to DoS attacks and Sybil attacks. But the fact is that in both cases, PoW is more vulnerable to attacks, and PoS has an advantage in this regard.

The concept of "centralization" is another major point of concern between PoS and PoW. In the interview, Buterin was asked the same question and he responded that PoS is not centralized and PoW is much more centralized than PoS. He said:

“There are several reasons. One is that you can participate in PoS no matter how much money you have, whereas you need to invest millions of dollars to participate in PoW. PoS is much less likely to be attacked by 51% than PoW.”