There seems to be a great deal of misinformation around on the internet (mainly Reddit and Twitter), where ideas are spread around and people make claims.

Firstly we need to understand there are trade offs for each Consensus Mechanisms and understand the key differences and trades offs they make, after all they are trying to solve the Byzantine’s Generals Problem .

Bitcoin Cash Mining with GPU Miners and SSD’s

Proof of Work (PoW)

Proof of work is the first (and most well known) consensus mechanisms and invented by Bitcoin’s founder, Satoshi Nakamoto. In PoW, a miner is running a program to find the hash first to be allowed to add a new block of transactions to the block-chain. Mining is a very CPU heavy intensive so having a high Hash rate is ideal for miners to calculate as many hashes per second (1MH/s is equal to 1 million hashes per second). If a miner mines a block they receive a reward for doing so (currently at 12.5 Bitcoin per block, and roughly 144 blocks per day).

Pros: DDOS protection, High security, Miners with High Wallet Balances cannot influence decisions.

Cons: Huge Cost for Security, 51% Attack Vectors.

Examples: The Big Three - Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin, Litecoin

Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin, Litecoin

Proof of Stake (PoS)

Proof of Stake is a type of algorithm by which a cryptocurrency blockchain network aims to achieve distributed consensus. In Proof of Stake; based cryptocurrencies the creator of the next block is chosen via various combinations; such as Randomized Block Selection and or Coin age based selection

Proof of Work requires extensive energy consumption, which over the past a few years, the rising value of Bitcoin boosted the demand for Graphical Processor Units. Unlike Proof of Work, Proof of Stake is based on the participants’ coin stake. The more coins the staker has, the more likely the staker will add a new block of the transaction to the block-chain. There’s no block reward in Proof of Stake. The stakers rewards are only the transaction fee. Due to the lower energy-intensive compared to Proof of Work, the Proof of Stake system is ideally suited for platforms with static coin supply.

Pros: More Energy Efficient and Cost Effective than PoW

Cons: Nothing at Stake Consensus Failure, Small Number of Users Staking will cause Centralization. Less Secure than PoW.

Examples: Neo, Qtum, PivX.

Neo, Qtum, PivX

Delegated Proof of Stake (DpoS)

Delegated Proof of Stake (DpoS) is a consensus algorithm developed to secure a blockchain by ensuring representation of transactions within it. DPoS is designed as an implementation of technology-based democracy, using voting and election process to protect blockchain from centralization and malicious usage.

Delegated Proof of Stake is mostly maintained through the election process. Active users of a DpoS — based blockchain are voting for “witnesses” and “delegates” with placing their tokens on the name of their candidate. Positions of the witnesses and delegates differ in various cryptocurrencies and one role can absorb another role’s functions or even eliminate it. In case of Bit Shares, witnesses are responsible for creating and validating blocks, with a certain number of most popular witnesses being a part of a committee of block forgers. Top-tier witnesses are awarded with fees for every validated transaction. Most DpoS based cryptocurrencies don’t allow witnesses to prevent transaction from happening and if a witness missed a block (e.g. because his/her server went offline), it is redirected to the next active witness immediately. On the other hand, some cryptocurrencies offer witnesses a right to block transactions, their malevolent use of this power is prevented with active voting and possible reputation damage.

Pros: More Scalable than PoW cryptocurrencies, Faster than PoW and PoS, More Governance to smaller users, more energy efficient.

Cons: Highly Centralized, Smaller users votes can be gamed to make them irrelevant. Easier to Organise an Attack. Delegates can form Cartels.

Examples: EOS,TRX

EoS + Tron

Conclusions

As you can see there are a number of trade offs for each system, while some ARE faster than others, there is significant trade offs to Security and Centralization.

In conclusion, I’ll let you as readers decide which you think is best!

What do you value more - Transaction throughput or Security?

Personally I value my security when it comes to cryptocurrencies and while some coins such as EOS or TRX may be faster and scale better, they are significantly less secure in doing so than others such as BCH or BTC.

— kilRCola