IOHK’s Charles Hoskinson: “Fake Stake Has Got Nothing on Cardano”

Through a recently published article, well known tech researcher Andrew Miller outlined the many different vulnerabilities that currently affect around 30 cryptocurrencies based on the PoS (proof-of-stake) protocol.

As part of his findings, Miller noted that when using a PoS framework, miscreants who have little to no stake in a network can crash nodes by simply choking the altcoin’s native data channels with unnecessary information.

For those who may not know, these aforementioned vulnerabilities have been labelled ‘Fake stake attacks’ by experts since they are caused due to the use of poor ‘validation processes’ by users.

Fake Stake got nothing on Cardano https://t.co/9PEwhTkCt4

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) January 30, 2019

More on the Matter

In response to Miller’s aforementioned study, Charles Hoskinson tweeted out a message earlier today where he claimed that Cardano [ADA] was completely safe from the “vulnerabilities spotted on POS v3 digital currencies”.

Not only that, he then went a step further and posted an article by Philipp Kant, Director of Formal Methods of Godel Team, which clearly showcases how Cardano makes use of a framework that secures it from the vulnerabilities outlined by Andrew and his team.

At this point in the article, it should be mentioned that when talking about traditional POS systems, we can see that the probability of block creation is directly correlated to the stake held by a user. However, when talking about PoS v3.0, the block validation process is much more complex since it requires the network to verify the amount of stake that has been put forth by an individual user for any transaction.

On the matter, Kant spoke about the Ouroboros protocol (on which ADA has been created) and why it is so unique. He was quoted saying:

“For Cardano, IOHK took a different approach. Instead of finding a minimal variation of bitcoin, we relied on world-leading academics and researchers to create a new protocol and codebase from scratch”

Other key information worth bearing in mind:

• The individual who is unanimously elected to generate a block is given the designation of ‘slot leader’.
• The election process of a slot leader is determined by the amount of stake he/she owns.

Final Take

In closing out this piece, it should be made clear that each and every system making use of the POS v3 protocol works on the simple principle of ‘replacing hashing power with stake for electing a slot leader’.

Not only that, according to Kant, each and every one of the major problems that have cropped up in relation to PoS are due to the modifications that have been made to the protocol by various third-party entities. However, since Cardano [ADA] has been devised atop ‘Ouroboros’, it is free from any such issues..

“Not only does Cardano have a fundamentally different foundation, but that foundation is the result of multiple peer-reviewed academic papers, and an unprecedented collaboration between researchers and developers.”