Interesting arguments, no doubts.
First of all i think POS is not POS, there are many different POS designs to fix different problems. While i agree that many POS designs aren’t good either some seem to be good, at the price of some centralization of course, see the trilemma problem in general.
Than again, my point on mentioning POW not being fair was as an answer to unfairness in the AE POW described by an other user some posts above. I still think that compared to POS, leave alone for a moment the security aspect, it would be more fair compared to POW mining. 1 AE costs just right now 42 cents, no matter if you buy that AE in China, USA or wherever. In contrast mining 1 AE is quiet different . A miner in a low cost region like inner mongolia might mine (fictive!) 1000 AE with an initial investment of 100$ including electricity while the german miner for example will mine just 50 AE with the same initial investment.
(Didn’t make a true calculation, just fictive, but i guess you get the point). There is no fairness at all and as said allready it’s leading to mining centralization, especially at lower coin prices.
There is one more factor, the higher the initial investment in a low electricity region the higher the gain. At least in POS this is reverse, the higher you want to get your stake, the more you have to pay as the price rises in that case with every coin you buy for your stake. Only comparing here fairness and decentalization, not the security.
About: If you consider China a threat. It doesn’t matter what country it is, it’s a problem of centralization in my opinion. If for some reason all the mining pools and mining facilities would be in the USA i would adress the USA of course, but as it’s currently china with a somehow repressive and controlling system i have to adress just … china.
About “what does not kill me makes me stronger”, sure, true, enough you don’t get killed and survive it. That’s thin ice here in my opinion. I think we all have witnessed enough examples where a given project didn’t recover from a serious attack, missconfiguration, bug, centralization and so on. There is no garantee someone WILL survive it. The higher the coin/project is by market cap the more responsibility is needed by the dev team.
What i absolutly do not agree is that by now mining is a competive business. This might have been the case until 1 year ago. It doesn’t hold true by now, even less in some months/years. It’s simply concentrated to some chinese regions with electricity access in the range of 1.5-2 cents per kw/h, some former soviet republics with electricity access in the range of 2-5 cents and that’s it all over. Having in mind that the world average price for electricity is 13 cents it’s no rocket science to realize that most parts in the world are not competive in the mining business, hence, there is no competition by now, hence this argument is truly wrong in my opinion.
Not only have chinese mining facilities the advantage of low electricity costs but as well have the advantage of less investement into hardware as they don’t need to pay for shipping, tax and custom fees, VAT, and like in the case of asics the producers run their own mining facilities at lowest hardware self costs. That’s not competition when you have ALL hardware manufactures in china & lowest electricity in china. That’s actually a monopoly scenario.
I made several researches on geographical mining centralization allready, there is no doubt that this happens right now. Even worse, there is even mining centralization within china itself to 2 regions, inner mongolia and shenzen, what’s left for the reset of the world … Just as a side note on how POW is flawed today from a decentralization point of view. Using the word decentralization while relying on POW is allready missleading in my opinion, no matter your personal/projects effords and goals are different and aim for decentralization.
However, i again, suggest to read this research, especially the attack vectors that apply for censorship, mining pool attacks and internet attack which most don’t give any attention too. Not that it will change anything, but at least it gives a good picture what future at some time will bring. Better aware than surprised, not?
Even i’am critical on POW in general nowadays i have full faith in the AE team and hope you all make the best out of the situation, now and in future.
