Proof of Stake (PoS)
Last updated
Last updated
PoS is a newer, less energy-intensive, and thus more sustainable consensus mechanism than PoW. Through PoS consensus, holders of a blockchain asset can participate in securing and validating on-chain transactions by delegating their stake to a validator.
Launched in 2012, was the first PoS project. , , and are three popular PoS blockchains. Ethereum has recently moved from PoW to PoS after a successful ‘Merge’.
It is important to note that unlike Ethereum’s version of PoS, however, Cardano’s PoS mechanism:
Enables liquid staking (i.e. no lock-up) through which holders of Cardano native tokens can withdraw their stake or delegate it to another validator (stake pool) at any time.
Requires a small initial amount of 2.17 ada to start staking
Has no slashing feature that risks unfairly punishing delegators for staking to nodes that do not operate as intended.
is Cardano’s PoS consensus protocol and was the first provably secure PoS protocol. In other words, Ouroboros offers mathematically verifiable security against attackers. The protocol is guaranteed to be secure, as long as 51% of the stake is held by honest participants. According to , the original paper has been academically cited more than 1400 times, and variants of the protocol are used on other PoS chains.
