Seeing how LUNA fared this past week, a POS governed

project, I'm really starting to question a few items. With that in mind, I need to ask - is zec's transition to POS 100% for certain or still somewhat open to debate and can I assume we stop transition plans if we over time see other POS networks have governance issues?

I think it really depends on *how* PoS is implemented. Some Tendermint networks have a small group of validators, Cardano has thousands of permissionless stakepools

Yep, agree, the how will be important and knowing Zcash measured and thoughtful approach in general I'm guessing we'll be fine.

delegated proof of stake opens the door to various attacks. It’ll also centralize the chain as those with the most $ will get the most rewards and have the most voting power. zcash should stick with PoW and not go proof of stake. especially delegated proof of stake. Look at all the dPoS models. You’ll see the same entities operating nodes at the top of each ecosystem no matter which. Meaning the same entities control the network, have the most voting power and get the biggest piece of the pie to sell at whatever the price may be. Solana, Atom, Near, Polygon, Terra, Juno, Polkadot and so on you’ll see the same node operators. It’s like a small club and the regular holders and smaller nodes aren’t in the club. It would be a huge mistake to switch to proof of stake.

This is what I was getting at, thanks for formulating it in a good way 👍🏽

@reldev

Depends on the delegation model doesn't it? Using Cosmos SDK/Tendermint based chains as an example, when you delegate your coins to a validator (stake) you don't give up your spend authority and you don't give up your goverance rights so regardless of how many coins a validator represents they can only vote their own coins, not those of the other coin holders that delegated to them.

In theory just, in practice not sure...

Is mining Zcash still profitable enough for miners? As long as Zcash is PoW, it's important that mining remains profitable.... in order to strongly secure the network, and to insure that it stays decentralized enough.

pirate chain is more profitable as well as horizen. If you have the z miners already then yeah it is can be. equihash is one of best altos in my opinion

The same happens to miners and miner pools. They are centralizing. Try to mine without joining to any major mining pool. As for node operators, it’s okay to me. You can run a node with raspberry pi, so why you won’t run few different nodes if you have the whole server. As for me it’s not centralizing, we just observe the birth of new working class, specialized on validation. They just want to run their nodes and get their rewards. And diversification of chains reduces risks by the way. If I don’t have my own node on other chains, I am happy to find a validator that I trust already.

Running a proof of stake validator takes a bit more than a rasperberry pi. PoS is quite different than PoW and is no easy transition that WILL come with negative consequences no matter what. Anyone can run a full node in PoW fairly easy. I run many of them. I also mine. Yes it is harder to solo mine. It can be done. I have tried it myself. If you have the hardware then you can. In a dPoS model running a full node is virtually pointless. If you compare it to mining it would be every holder watching the validators with the most coins effectively being the only miners (because now block rewards would be getting minted by them and they take their commission along with the most voting power) while holders get to watch on sidelines. It would immediately become more centralized.

It depends on chain. You surely cannot run solana node, but there are a lot of chains that doesn’t require much. And even if it’s not okay for raspberry pi, running nodes on VMs or docker is still possible. I think I get your point.. But it still to be proven on practice with time. And finally, pos or pow, no matter. Money and power always end up between few hands while masses get nothing. It’s a pity but it is a reality. As for myself, from my perspective it’s easier and cheaper to run my own pos node. I cannot afford to run asic, The electricity cost is way to high at place where I am. I don’t count the fact that the machine itself is expensive, because you have to buy your initial required stake in some chains in order to run validator.

"Every holder watching the validators with most coins" I'm not a fan of Cardano, but the PoS mechanism they created is basically eliminating what you said, if the stakepool you delegate has many ADA in it, the less rewards it recieves to distribute to its delegators, making delegators to search for a better pool (less participants delegating but enough to win the block reward) its simple game theory