David Rosenthal has just posted an excellent writeup of the benefits and drawbacks to post-Proof of Work cryptocurrencies like Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake and Chia’s Proof of Space and Time. He really does nail the details I think, and its well worth a read if a realistic discussion on the pros and cons of the different approaches to solving Bitcoin and Ethereum’s massive environmental impact.
I think he does a really good job of laying out the issues, and while a long read it is quite a good one. He lays out a number of theoretical attacks on Chia and the on-chain pooling protocol that I think are worth discussing. Especially the possibility of using chialisp smart contracts to enforce malicious pool behaviour. I don’t know about the practicality of attacks like this, but the article itself is quite in depth and you should check it out here.
Based on the amount of detail and work in this post, I will personally be going through the remainder of his work on Chia at least, and I suggest anyone with an interest for learning more do the same.
