<p>At the time Bitcoin was invented PoS, PoD, PoE, did not yet exist.</p>

<p>Having said that PoW is arguably still the most secure today. The most popular PoW alternative today. PoS will always arguably be vulnerable due to the "Nothing at Stake" problem:</p>

<p><a href="https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf</a></p>

<p>"The point is this: even if stakeholders are bonding coins with a large market value, in a way that they will lose the coins if they behave dishonestly, this is only a deterrent to dishonest behaviour until they move their coins, which, being an event in the future (both in realtime and blocktime), is necessarily not something that can be detected at the the current point in blocktime. So cheap histories, or “costless simulation”, are not something that can be prevented while only bonding value defined inside the system"</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-06-17T16:42:31.170Z
2016-06-17T16:42:31.170Z
Hans Meyer
<p>There seems to be a myriad of ways to find consensus (PoW, PoS, PoD, PoE and various other methods and hybrid approaches). </p>

<p>What was the reasoning behind bitcoin being PoW and treating the chain with the largest amount of work as the correct chain? Is there something about PoW consensus that was inherently appealing to Satoshi or was it merely the default option?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-06-17T16:46:02.687Z
@fredsbend Presumably satoshi had to invent PoW then as well. Is your objection that this question is too easy to answer or doesn't have an answer?
Jack Fraser
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-06-17T17:03:38.920Z
Satoshi did not invent PoW. It was used in Hashcash several years before.
Pieter Wuille
<proof-of-work><proof-of-stake><consensus><proof-of-existence><proof-of-destruction>
Why was the chain with the largest work chosen as the metric of consensus?
Jack Fraser
# Why was the chain with the largest work chosen as the metric of consensus?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-06-16)

There seems to be a myriad of ways to find consensus (PoW, PoS, PoD, PoE and various other methods and hybrid approaches).

What was the reasoning behind bitcoin being PoW and treating the chain with the largest amount of work as the correct chain? Is there something about PoW consensus that was inherently appealing to Satoshi or was it merely the default option?

**Tags:** proof-of-work, proof-of-stake, consensus, proof-of-existence, proof-of-destruction

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: @fredsbend Presumably satoshi had to invent PoW then as well. Is your objection that this question is too easy to answer or doesn't have an answer?  
> **username_1**: Satoshi did not invent PoW. It was used in Hashcash several years before.  

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## 1 answers

### Answer by username_2 on 2016-06-17. Score: 2

At the time Bitcoin was invented PoS, PoD, PoE, did not yet exist.

Having said that PoW is arguably still the most secure today. The most popular PoW alternative today. PoS will always arguably be vulnerable due to the "Nothing at Stake" problem:

<https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf>

"The point is this: even if stakeholders are bonding coins with a large market value, in a way that they will lose the coins if they behave dishonestly, this is only a deterrent to dishonest behaviour until they move their coins, which, being an event in the future (both in realtime and blocktime), is necessarily not something that can be detected at the the current point in blocktime. So cheap histories, or “costless simulation”, are not something that can be prevented while only bonding value defined inside the system"


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