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What Is the Distinction Between POS and POW?

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The popular algorithms that we are going to talk about today are Proof of Stack and Proof of Work. It is a well-known algorithm that has proven both its efficiency and security on the blockchain. So, let’s try to know what is the distinction between PoS and PoW. PoS is a popular consensus technology and is used as a Bitcoin PoW alternative. PoS suffers from many possible attacks but not so in PoW if you also want to solve all the issues associated with it then it needs a security mechanism. Let us try to know the main distinction between all those concepts and their pros and cons through this article. It is a popular concept, and there are many variations of it, which are being tried to increase so that they can be used. So, if you are a newbie in crypto investment, you may want to know what factors enhance the Value of Cryptocurrency?

How does the Proof of work concept work?

PoW is an older mechanism that was implemented in 1997 by Adam Back as a way to protect many services from DDoS attacks. The user is presented with a digital puzzle that needs to be solved to be able to gain access to the resource. This idea was applied to the blockchain in bitcoin (BTC) as a technique to construct P2P distributed timestamp servers. Since the BTC blockchain is the most widely used application of this technology, we will examine how it is implemented in this blog. Furthermore, in other applications, like DDoS defence and others, this idea might be extremely dissimilar.

How does the Proof of stack concept work?

Proof of Work consumes the most energy, which is its biggest drawback. If a large number of nodes are connected to the network, it will be difficult for you to find solutions to puzzles as well as validate transactions. To solve this problem, a novel consensus technique based on the PoC (proof of concept) stack was suggested. The idea is based on selecting the node that verifies the following block by an election. It is a concept and the idea behind it is quite simple: if a node has a lot of money invested in the blockchain, the less likely it is to be destroyed as the cost will be much higher than the gain due to an attack.

The distinction between PoS and PoW

Here is the major distinction among both Proof of Work and Proof of Stake:

Proof of Stack (PoS)

  • Energy-efficient
  • Not well tested
  • It is made for only one purpose: if the system has a stake, it will never be tampered with.
  • You have the right to add blocks to the blockchain and the amount of staked value. 
  • It will take less time to validate all those blocks which are new.

Proof of Work (PoW)

  • High energy consumption
  • Long-term testing and proven efficiency
  • A computation limit set by machines, no matter how powerful they may be
  • Linking blocks in the blockchain are only dependent on computation power.
  • On the other hand, validating new blocks with PoW can take a long time if compared to PoS.

Which is Better Proof of Work (PoW) or Proof of Stake (PoS)?

The PoW model is an unfair system where participants are not given a chance to earn mining rewards. But on the other hand, this is not true at all for PoS as there is an equal chance to be a fraudster and reap the rewards. A decentralised and open ecosystem has always been backed by the Ethereum (ETH) developers and community. It is obvious why crypto projects prefer PoS systems given how potential hackers are abusing the PoW approach.