Maybe it's poetic that POS is an acronym standing for piece of shit.
Now that Ethereum has migrated to proof-of-stake, the left-wing Green agenda is loving it. Of course, the elite doesn't actually care that Ethereum "conserves energy", but rather finds it appealing that the Ethereum network can now theoretically be bought out by deep pockets.
Of course the Hive knows better as we've already lived through a traumatic hostile takeover, but the rest of the world is still blissfully ignorant that community is not for sale. Imperialists believe otherwise, and they are going to get come to rude awakening at some point down the road. Guaranteed.
But that's beside the point.
The real highlight to be displayed here is how early we are in the game and how ignorant the majority is about how this tech actually works. I want you guys to really think about this one: now that ETH has transitioned to POS... how many people out there are thinking:
Well if Ethereum did it... then Bitcoin can do it as well! This is the environment we are talking about here! We need to stop those damn energy wasters and get them to change the way it works!
So many people...
Because political views don't care about things like facts and reality itself. They pick a tight band of "truth" to operate within and then attempt to define the entire world within that tiny bubble. Bitcoin wastes energy because someone with an alternate agenda spun up a narrative full of half-truth that then became widely accepted as unquestionable.
Within the context of a power crisis, bear market, impending recession, and worldwide supply-chain disruption, it's an easy story to not only believe, but to peddle to friends and family. The best propaganda is guaranteed to go viral and it's hard to see where the story originated from because everyone is spreading it around like a virulent plague.
It won't be long before the world demands that Bitcoin transition to POS, which is literally impossible. Anyone that makes this claim is simply showing how brainwashed and ignorant they are of the situation, to the point of demanding that something impossible needs to happen.
just another sad fork.
If someone were to fork Bitcoin into POS...
- not only would that require a ton of work
- not only is there no financial incentive
- not only is there no dev team willing to do it
- but it would get less adoption than even Faketoshi's BSV fork
- no one would use it
- it wouldn't even be called Bitcoin
Why would anyone use a fork of Bitcoin that's POS when they can just use Ethereum? Make it make sense. If you want POS use Ethereum. It's not hard. Don't project that tech onto another network that is incapable of incorporating it. Not to mention the fact that the ETH community is massive and there's basically no way to compete with it at this point, just like there is no way to compete with Bitcoin's superior hashrate and the security being derived from it; combined with 10 minutes between blocks (longer than any other network, and thus even more secure on a block to block basis).
This is the entire point of diversity.
Decentralization demands robust redundant solutions to the problem of consensus. Antifragile Trust is more import than efficiency within a society that's about to implode from the weight of its own corruption. The argument that POW mining should be done away with because know-nothing politicians said so is not to be taken seriously. We need many algorithms and networks in play to ensure that the security and future of the cryptosphere remains intact no matter what happens. Every network needs a niche.
A lack of solidarity.
It absolutely is not helpful that Ethereum maximalists are running around trying to capitalize on the left-wing propaganda and say that Ethereum is more valid now that it uses less energy. That's absurd. We are all in this together and trying to forge an alliance with the very institutions we are trying to disrupt is so hypocritical and counterproductive that it's enraging that the point even needs to be made out loud.
Proof-of-stake isn't impressive.
On a technical level, proof-of-stake is very easy to implement. Isn't it interesting how Binance was able to boot up the BSC network way before Ethereum could transition to proof-of-stake? The merge wasn't technically impressive because POS is a massive upgrade. It's impressive because transitioning from one consensus algorithm to another is extremely difficult to do (on multiple levels including layer-0 community consensus). EVM chains that didn't have blocks forged by another kind of consensus were extremely easy to boot up.
The Ethereum Merge, if anything, proves that it is possible to seamlessly transition from one algorithm to a completely different one with very little hiccups (even if it did take forever for it to actually happen). That's pretty significant, even though we may never see something like this happen ever again on such a massive scale. Who knows, maybe someone invents a superior form of consensus that many networks opt to transition to. I doubt it, but you never know. Anything is possible.
What about DPOS?
Obviously DPOS and POS are a lot more similar than something like the original POW, but still there are a lot of significant differences. The ability to delegate power cuts out the middle man and reduces the need for a strong off-chain layer-0. How many times have we seen a Bitcoin Maximalist begging Twitter for their WEB2 account back? Yeah, it's ridiculous and hypocritical, but it also shows us how little infrastructure we've actually built and how much work is left to be done. An infinite amount really. We still need to rebuild the entire economy from the ground up. It's going to take decades.
The nicest thing about DPOS is that we know in advance who is going to mint the next block. There's also a reasonable expectation that this entity is trustworthy, as it is not easy getting into the top 20. Also there is a lot to lose once someone gets there and reaches that level of reputation. The incentives align for those who make it to protect the network at all costs.
On something like POS the block-producer is much more random and they have to risk their own stake to mint a block. It may or may not be worth it to try and post a bad block or censor certain transactions depending on the situation. I'll be honest that I still don't fully understand the differences between DPOS and POS but they are there. Personally I have a lot of bias toward DPOS for obvious reasons. I'm not looking to research POS more because I've personally already come to the conclusion that it's an inferior model. Perhaps something will happen out there in the jungle that surprises me and changes my mind.
Conclusion
The Ethereum Merge looks like a net win for the entire cryptosphere. Even if it turns out to be a complete failure, we will learn a lot within that failure and make adjustments appropriately. Still, none of that is going to stop politicians from spinning their lies and trying to project their agendas onto crypto. The sooner we come together and realize who the real enemy is, the better.