{"id":6742,"date":"2022-10-07T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-07T03:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci02ad23abb00026d0"},"modified":"2025-09-28T17:48:56","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T22:48:56","slug":"nothings-cheaper-than-proof-of-work-consensus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/nothings-cheaper-than-proof-of-work-consensus","title":{"rendered":"Nothing&#8217;s Cheaper Than Proof-Of-Work Consensus"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"bsf_rt_marker\"><\/div><p><em>This is a transcribed excerpt of the \u201cBitcoin Magazine Podcast,\u201d hosted by P and Q. In this episode, they are joined by Paul Sztorc to break down why all roads lead to proof-of-work and how proof-of-stake protocols are fooling themselves by thinking that proof-of-stake technology can stay decentralized and secure.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"youtube-embed\" data-video_id=\"BjmclTLZl5g\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Nothing&#039;s Cheaper than Proof of Work \/w Paul Sztorc\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/BjmclTLZl5g?feature=oembed&#038;enablejsapi=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/BjmclTLZl5g\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch This Episode On YouTube<\/a> Or <a href=\"https:\/\/rumble.com\/v1mr2xm-nothings-cheaper-than-proof-of-work.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Rumble<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Listen To The Episode Here:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/nothings-cheaper-than-proof-of-work-w-paul-sztorc\/id1459884105?i=1000581814549\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Apple<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/episode\/6yNcriGVLqY0BEPbVru6Dr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Spotify<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.google.com\/feed\/aHR0cHM6Ly9iaXRjb2lubWFnYXppbmUubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M\/episode\/ODYxOWQxMjAtM2U4MC00N2U2LTg2ZWQtMjkzMTg4MmY0ODNh?sa=X&amp;ved=0CAUQkfYCahcKEwj4reuzgMz6AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAQ\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Google<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Libsyn<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>P: Start by defining at a high level what we mean when we say proof-of-work versus proof-of-stake. How would you define proof-of-work and how would you define proof-of-stake? <\/p>\n<p>Paul Sztorc: It&#8217;s fine because it\u2019s the point of my article. <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/guides\/proof-of-work\">Proof-of-work<\/a> is you do this one type of computation over and over again. So your computer is working very hard. There&#8217;s no other way to do it, it&#8217;s just based on quantity. How many times can you do this SHA256 hash? You&#8217;re doing it really fast, and every two weeks the bottom performers are fired. So basically, since you are just doing a computation a lot, it comes down to the electricity you spend, the money you spend on hardware, physical chips, the money you pump in to cool the chips, and it&#8217;s basically like you&#8217;re running your computer, you&#8217;re making your computer work really hard. <\/p>\n<p>This doesn&#8217;t happen so much anymore, but in the olden days, you would be using your computer and it would just make little sounds, but then if you fired up a game \u2014 something that was intensive \u2014 the fan would go crazy and it would start to make more noise because the computer\u2019s working really hard. So that&#8217;s the work; that poor computer is working really hard instead of doing nothing or only working when you ask it to. It&#8217;s going 100% trying to just churn out as much as possible. <\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/guides\/proof-of-stake\">proof-of-stake<\/a>, the idea is in the reality of the cryptosystem, in the reality of the blockchain or in the reality of the coin, in that reality of the full node software, it knows somehow \u2014 which is part of the problem, this somehow \u2014 but it knows who has which coins and it also knows who stakes which coins. These people put the coins into a sort of hazardous state, a hazardous box. They stake the coins. They say, \u201cI buy in\u201d with a certain amount, and then they join this \u2014 what would be \u2014 class of miners in their world.<\/p>\n<p>They have a certain amount of coins staked and then there&#8217;s a complicated lottery system. There are many variants, but in general, it&#8217;s like the more money you stake, the more likely you are to be chosen. When you&#8217;re chosen, you have the ability to create the next block and then create the reward because you get a shot of that $10 billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>All roads lead to proof-of-work because it is the most efficient and fairest way to come to consensus, without having a rich-get-richer problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2520,"featured_media":4342,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[1826,57,1948,1216,1220,1219],"class_list":{"0":"post-6742","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technical","8":"tag-bitcoin-magazine-podcast","9":"tag-consensus","10":"tag-paul-sztorc","11":"tag-podcast","12":"tag-proof-of-stake","13":"tag-proof-of-work"},"author_data":{"id":2520,"name":"Bitcoin Magazine","nicename":"bitcoin-magazine","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/bitcoin-magazine-logo.jpeg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/20220504_btcfinal_zack-voell-so-what-if-bitcoin-miners-fees-are-low.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2520"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}