[One web3 concept every day] Quickly understand POS
The flaw of POW is that everyone consumes a lot of energy, so it has been criticized by many people. If you want to achieve universal trust (a coined word, universal trust), there are also some other algorithms that can achieve it. One of them is POS.
POS (Proof of Stake), also called proof of equity. What are rights and interests? It is the assets owned by users in the blockchain system. So what is proof of stake? It is easy to understand by taking an example from "Fengshen". Nodes pledge their rights and interests to the chain as "protons" and become "verifiers". When a block is to be produced, the system will randomly select a verifier to package the transaction. If this verifier is a "traitor" and has malicious behavior , then the system will confiscate his "protons" as punishment.
Although the mechanism is different from that of POW, the principles are the same. They all assume that there are traitors in the blockchain system, and that traitors will pay huge costs for doing evil. POW chooses to let participants answer questions, which requires a lot of computing resources and is extremely costly to control the network. POS, on the other hand, chooses to let all participants take hostages. If the traitor does evil, then his hostages will be killed.
In many PoS systems, a participant's chance of becoming a validator is directly proportional to the "stake" he holds. This means that validators who stake more assets have a higher chance of being selected as the creator of the next block. At the same time, validators are rewarded for their verification work, perhaps in the form of newly issued currency or network transaction fees.
Finally, in some POS mechanisms, the rights and interests are not only tokens, but also the time of holding the currency, reputation, points, etc., which can be counted as rights and interests. Therefore, broadly speaking, POS does not necessarily require pledging tokens.
