[Mirror] A Proof of Stake Design Philosophy
Vitalik Buterin via the Vitalik Buterin Blog This is a mirror of the post at https://medium.com/@VitalikButerin/a-proof-of-stake-design-philosophy-506585978d51 Systems like Ethereum (and Bitcoin, and NXT, and Bitshares, etc) are a fundamentally new class of cryptoeconomic organisms — decentralized, jurisdictionless entities that exist entirely in cyberspace, maintained by a combination of cryptography, economics and social consensus. They are kind of like BitTorrent, but they are also not like BitTorrent, as BitTorrent has no concept of state — a distinction that turns out to be crucially important. They are sometimes described as decentralized autonomous