Talk:Proof of stake

Edit request: Addition of staking explanation to "Description" section

Request: I propose adding a brief explanation of staking to the Description section.

Proposed text:

In Proof of Stake blockchains, participants can engage in staking, where they lock up a portion of their cryptocurrency holdings to support the network's security and operations. In return, these participants, often referred to as validators, receive rewards, typically in the form of additional tokens. This process not only incentivizes honest participation but also discourages malicious behavior through economic penalties, such as slashing.

Justification:

• It seems like the term "staking" is commonly used in discussions about Proof of Stake but is not explicitly explained in the article.
• Not being an expert in the field (and somewhat COI-biased), I'd prefer for another pair of eyes on this. There might be better sources as well, feel free to change.

Thanks! /Urbourbo (talk) 17:25, 8 February 2025 (UTC) Urbourbo (talk) 17:25, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

Done. I have added the text to the article with a minor edit. --MtPenguinMonster (talk) 12:01, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Sorry, I have reverted this change. Consensys.io is not a reliable source. If you find a reliable source, summarize what that source says, instead. Grayfell (talk) 06:11, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Hmm good point. How about using CoinDesk instead? Say, In Proof of Stake blockchains, participants can engage in staking, where they lock up a portion of their cryptocurrency holdings to support the network's security and operations. These participants, often referred to as validators, may operate individually or as part of staking pools. By joining staking pools, even those without substantial holdings can participate in the staking process. In return, validators receive rewards, typically in the form of additional tokens, which are distributed among pool members. This process not only incentivizes honest participation but also discourages malicious behavior through economic penalties, such as slashing.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Urbourbo (talk • contribs) 14:56, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Coindesk is not reliable either, per WP:COINDESK. To put it bluntly, cryptocurrency websites are dominated by undisclosed conflict-of-interest editing, churnalism, AI slop, and several other issues. This makes the topic difficult to cover to Wikipedia's standards. Even superficially academic sources, such as journals, have more than their fair share of problems. If a detail is not covered by a reliable source (in simple terms this means a source with a positive reputation for accuracy and fact-checking outside of the pro-crypto bubble) the detail probably doesn't belong in a Wikipedia article. Grayfell (talk) 21:03, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, how about Britannica then? /Urbourbo (talk) 22:40, 19 March 2025 (UTC)

Realising now that staking is also covered in one of the article's existing main sources: /Urbourbo (talk) 12:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC) Urbourbo (talk) 12:26, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

 Not done: There appears to be significant overlap between the proposed addition and the existing first paragraph of the section. Perception312 (talk) 15:02, 8 June 2025 (UTC)

References

Extended-confirmed-protected edit request on 17 August 2025

« In the Description section, please add the following paragraph before theoneshowing bulletpoints for généralisations »

Riposo and Gupta that a formal PoS mathematical model can derive a metric for the expected gain of a staker. They introduced a forward-method model that computes staking rewards as the staking return per block-validation period and proved that the resulting interest equals the ratio of the average staking gain to the total staked coins. The model incorporates PoS-specific factors such as slashing (penalties for misbehavior) and Maximal Extractable Value (MEV), showing that slashing reduces expected rewards and that MEV links transaction-fee extraction to the average staking gain. In addition, the authors illustrated the model using Ethereum 2.0 and presented an analogous derivation for PoW consensus. 212.205.49.114 (talk) 10:11, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

 Done Thepharoah17 (talk) 04:06, 15 September 2025 (UTC)

References

"Attacks" section is misleading

The "Attacks" section is misleading according to the same sources being used. Most PoS networks are immune to Long-range and Bribery/Short-range attacks because they have finality.

Long-range attacks: This attack only affects tiny portion of Proof-of-stake networks that don't have finality. In fact, the source already being used in that section ("Survey on Long-Range Attacks for Proof of Stake Protocols") says under its "Moving Checkpoints" section:

"Moving checkpoints or simply checkpoints is a mitigation technique used by almost all PoS protocols....

This defense mechanism partially mitigates Long Range attacks as it allows for some block reorganisation to happen. Nonetheless, with Moving checkpoints, Long Range attacks are downgraded and now fall under the category of Short Range attacks as the reorganisation does not start at the Genesis block. With the use of moving checkpoints, the main chain becomes truly immutable up to the latest n blocks."

The second source used, "A Survey of Distributed Consensus Protocols for Blockchain Networks" says something similar: "general long-range attacks (and costless simulation as a whole) can be resolved by checkpointing"

So nearly all PoS network are immune to long-range attacks due to having finality/checkpoints, and PoS networks with instant finality are immune to both long-range and short-range attacks.

Bribery attack: According to the 1st source being used, this is just another term for a short-range (51%) attack that can only happen if blocks can be reverted. It can occur on both PoW and PoS networks (according to the original source) that don't have instant finality. But for some reason, the editor wrote this section as if it's a long-range attack, requiring going back in history to rewrite blocks. According to the source, short-range attacks can be mitigated on PoS networks: "PoS tackles this issue by either enforcing a slashing condition or by releasing violators from their position". HSukePup (talk) 07:38, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

---

Additional section:

I would recommend including a section for this much more notable and realistic attack vector for PoS networks:

Liveness / Censorship attack: The same 1st source also talks about this. HSukePup (talk) 07:38, 14 December 2025 (UTC)

Two small improvements

As of https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Proof_of_stake&oldid=1335662968 I see at least two problems with this article. I haven't read the whole thing attentively as I don't feel it to be very (reliably) informative.

The first one is in the Description where, on the 2nd paragraph, PoW is said to use more computational prowess -- this should be changed to power instead. _{(I'm no native English speaker, however, prowess is not something that some CPUs/GPUs have and others don't -- they're all static, not smart, nor brave, nor particularly skilled. I haven't looked through the page history to find when it was introduced.)}

The other one is under BFT-based PoS: the 3rd point reads "The BFT consensus is used to finalize the most-voted block.", suggesting that some kind of a BFT consensus process/algorithm exists that solves the BFT problem. _{(to the best of my knowledge, it still doesn't)} I searched for "consensus" in the whole page, there's no indication the word is being used with a meaning specific to PoS (rather than that used in the field of distributed computing). I checked the referenced source, and "BFT consensus" (pp.124-128) appears to be something other than BFT. The list of steps is probably directly derived from p.336. This subsection should be rewritten to clarify what is meant by BFT consensus (no suggestions). And, at the very least, the "Main article" link to Byzantine fault should be removed. o_andras (talk) 14:53, 12 May 2026 (UTC)

Two minor copyediting corrections

Hi, I'm a new editor and noticed two small copyediting issues in the article.

1. In the Nominated PoS section, “PolkaDot” should be corrected to “Polkadot”.

2. In the Centralization section, the current sentence:

“Critics have argued that the proof of stake will likely lead cryptocurrency blockchains being more centralized in comparison to proof of work as the system favors users who have a large amount of cryptocurrency, which in turn could lead to users who have a large amount of cryptocurrency having major influence on the management and direction for a crypto blockchain.”

could be copyedited for grammar and readability to:

“Critics have argued that proof of stake may lead cryptocurrency blockchains to become more centralized than proof of work because the system favors users who hold larger amounts of cryptocurrency, which could give those users greater influence over the management and direction of the blockchain.”

This is intended only as a copyedit and does not change the underlying cited claim.

JoshHNimbus (talk) 01:59, 5 September 2026 (UTC)

 Done crtbob@talk:~$ ls contribs 02:26, 5 September 2026 (UTC)