I think it's a great thing that people are trying different approaches.
One factor is that a technology on its own doesn't create its success, but it's also dependent on the sociological environment the technology is born into.
This is why we see many technologies get hyped up and die off, just to come back decades later to succeed. The success depends heavily on the context.
That said, just like gtrubetskoy said below, proof of work was the solution that came after and solved all the seemingly impossible problems in an elegant manner.
The reason I'm skeptical about most "proof of stake" fanboys is that they are not even aware of all this history, and they also fail to realize the elegance of proof of work.
If you think about it, "proof of stake" is a very natural and even an obvious idea. I'm not saying the researchers who came up with proof of stake concept didn't achieve much, I'm saying the "proof of work" is almost like an alchemy compared to "proof of stake" because proof of stake is purely a system based on social factors ("let's vote to make decisions!") whereas proof of work is something not one person can easily wrap their head around.
And the craziest part is that this system has worked for a decade now. The only reason we know this works is because it's worked for a decade. I'm pretty sure Satoshi Nakamoto himself had no idea if it would work when he invented the scheme.
Overall I do think that proof of work is beautiful piece of technology that most people don't appreciate enough.
I run into many people just getting into "crypto" outright criticizing proof of work and not even understanding how it actually works, which is a pity because in their mind, proof of work is some stupid scheme that's like a crappy MVP with all the shitty problems like global warming, etc., while "proof of stake" is the clear future, and with a closed mindset like that you can't create a true solution IMO.
I definitely agree that PoW is very hard to understand because it is not a computer thing, it's about the relationship between large number theory, thermodynamics and statistics/probabilities.
One factor is that a technology on its own doesn't create its success, but it's also dependent on the sociological environment the technology is born into.
This is why we see many technologies get hyped up and die off, just to come back decades later to succeed. The success depends heavily on the context.
That said, just like gtrubetskoy said below, proof of work was the solution that came after and solved all the seemingly impossible problems in an elegant manner.
The reason I'm skeptical about most "proof of stake" fanboys is that they are not even aware of all this history, and they also fail to realize the elegance of proof of work.
If you think about it, "proof of stake" is a very natural and even an obvious idea. I'm not saying the researchers who came up with proof of stake concept didn't achieve much, I'm saying the "proof of work" is almost like an alchemy compared to "proof of stake" because proof of stake is purely a system based on social factors ("let's vote to make decisions!") whereas proof of work is something not one person can easily wrap their head around.
And the craziest part is that this system has worked for a decade now. The only reason we know this works is because it's worked for a decade. I'm pretty sure Satoshi Nakamoto himself had no idea if it would work when he invented the scheme.
Overall I do think that proof of work is beautiful piece of technology that most people don't appreciate enough.
I run into many people just getting into "crypto" outright criticizing proof of work and not even understanding how it actually works, which is a pity because in their mind, proof of work is some stupid scheme that's like a crappy MVP with all the shitty problems like global warming, etc., while "proof of stake" is the clear future, and with a closed mindset like that you can't create a true solution IMO.