Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
Like most things, I assume there exists a relatively simple high-level explanation, but nobody is forthcoming with it.
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The high level explanation is really simple. Blockchain is a database that a lot of people maintain copies of and have to agree on. The question is how do you make it costly for a potential attacker?
Proof of work's solution is have everyone waste some significant amount of money mining, so that it is very expensive to acquire a majority of mining computing power.
Proof of stake's solution is to take away all your staked tokens as punishment for being wrong.
The weaknesses depend on the details where you do need to know the technical bits.