Vitalik Buterin Hits Out Against Proof-Of-Work Supporters Over This

Vitalik Buterin, the founder of Ethereum, took to Twitter to respond to allegations against Proof-Of-Stake. Nick Payton, a self-claimed Bitcoiner, claimed that Ethereum and Proof-of-Stake blockchains are securities since you can vote to change their properties. 

Payton’s claim is very similar to the one made by the CEO of MicroStrategy, Michael Saylor. Vitalik responded to Payton’s comments and classified them as “bare-faced lies” by Proof-Of-Work proponents. 

Is Ethereum A Security Or Commodity?

The conversation surrounding the nature of crypto tokens has been long prevalent. Recently, SEC chair Gary Gensler disclosed that Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency that he is comfortable calling a commodity. In an interview with Altcoin Daily, Michael Saylor revealed that he believes Bitcoin is the only cryptocurrency while Ethereum is a security.

Stating the fact that it was issued by an ICO, has a management team, and has a hard-fork, Saylor argued that Ethereum can only be a security. He also revealed that Ethereum’s long-delayed difficulty bomb will destroy the Ethereum mining industry. 

Vitalik states that the argument that PoS includes voting on protocol parameters is a lie. According to him, in PoS, nodes simply reject invalid blocks similar to PoW. 

Pointing to the old Bitcoin Unlimited philosophy, Vitalik argued that PoW also allows voting rights on several issues. Buterin’s passionate defense of Proof-of-Stake can be explained by the upcoming Ethereum Merge, which will shift Ethereum’s consensus mechanism from Proof-Of-Work to Proof-Of-Stake. 

The merge is said to reduce Ethereum’s energy use by more than 99%, while also increasing scalability and reducing gas usage.

PoW vs PoS

With the upcoming ETH merge, the argument between Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake is not new. Recently, Jack Dorsey, the ex-CEO of Twitter and hardline Proof-Of-Work proponent, got into a Twitter beef with the CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried. 

SBF argued that Proof-Of-Stake is the only consensus mechanism that has a future in daily payment transactions. Pointing to the slowness and energy usage of PoW, SBF believed that Bitcoin can only be used as a store of value.

Dorsey took exception to SBF’s comment and asked him why he did not mention the lightning protocol, which handles Bitcoin’s daily transaction mechanism.