# @sreeramkannan: Debunking 8 economic security myths in proof of stake

Source: https://xcancel.com/sreeramkannan/status/1938643008251101360
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/sreeramkannan-Debunking-8-economic-security-myths-in-proof-of-stake?index=0x685f9c950dee21c9bfc414d36b80de6e320feef6f674e8605d4fefb8b92b983746d0a98e
Submitted by misha on 2025-06-28 UTC, 15 upvotes, 0 comments

## Summary

Sreeram Kannan argues that economic security in proof of stake is not a meme and that properly understood it can underpin a self-enforcing chain, rather than a committee-based one. He rebuts eight claims: that delegation leaves only an unstaked committee, since slashing makes operator choice matter; that forking can handle all security, though forks take about a week; and that slashed funds are burned rather than returned to harmed users. He also argues that liveness attacks are penalized in Ethereum through the inactivity leak, and that proof of work is itself staking via mining devices.

## Article

Debunking economic security myths.
Self-enforcing vs committee chains (Libra?).

Myth 1) Economic security is a meme because "delegation" implies we anyway only have a non-staked committee and thus no security. But delegation in the presence of slashing means - you chose your operator carefully - otherwise you will get slashed. So in fact the reasoning is totally misplaced.

Myth 2) Economic security is a meme because forking can solve all problems. Forking a blockchain takes time (~week) so if you rely on forking for all security then you should NEVER accept any transaction instantly - because it could get forked out. You need economic security to carry the economic load of any transaction finalized BEFORE the forkability period.

Myth 3) Economic security is a meme because users dont get any measurable protection. This is because slashed funds are burnt rather than given back to harmed users. If users can self-buy their own security demand, then we can have a purely automated market for economic security.

Myth 4) Economic security is a meme because it doesnt protect against liveness attacks. Thats because your chain doesnt understand how economic security works and is not designed to penalize liveness attacks. Stopping chain growth clearly leads to penalties in Ethereum. Censoring transactions for a long period will also lead to penalties by repurposing the inactivity leak.

Myth 5) If economic security is a meme, why incentivize stake at all? Should just use a committee. In which case we just get back Libra - except chosen by internet anons.

Myth 6) Since the PoS reward curve is arbitrary, economic security dont mean anything. Right now, reward curve is abitrary which sucks. But using stakesure,  users can declare and buy their own security against invalid behavior and price for security. In that case, the amount staked will be market-emergent rather than system designed. 

Myth 7) We should just go back to PoW. Proof of work is just staking by buying mining devices. Otherwise the cost of attack is zero. You cant burn (or redistribute) the mining devices of misbehaving miners to the harmed parties, but in proof of stake you can. 

Myth 8) Blockchains charge for compute or mev not security. This is the most pernicious, as no one is going to provision resources not paid for. Security pricing is what is going to lead to security provision. Again, stakesure (read the next tweet).

Understand economic security properly and you can build a self-enforcing chain. 
Or declare economic security is a meme and build a bullshit committee chain.