IOHK’s Charles Hoskinson says proof of stake is much better than proof of work

Welcome to Forkast Forecasts 2021. In this series, leaders, innovators and visionaries in blockchain-related fields tell Forkast.News their predictions for the year ahead.

Charles Hoskinson

Charles Hoskinson is founder and chief executive officer at IOHK, a cryptography and distributed systems research and development company.

One of IOHK’s projects is Cardano, a decentralized public blockchain and cryptocurrency project that uses smart contracts operating with its ADA cryptocurrency.

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Prior to IOHK, Hoskinson co-founded Ethereum as well as blockchain-related start-up Invictus Innovations. He was also the founding chairman of the Bitcoin Foundation’s education committee and established the Cryptocurrency Research Group in 2013.

Predictions for 2021

• U.S. policy for the crypto industry will depend on new U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen: “I think the single biggest development for our industry is going to be what Janet Yellen does. And basically, she’s going to have to make the decisions of what is FinCEN going to do, what is the SEC going to do? What is the CFTC going to do?”

• The industry migrating from proof of work to proof of stake: “There’s a lot of technology that’s forcing a conversation — the great movement of value from proof of work to proof of stake is occurring.”
  • “Currently, the leader here is Ethereum with Ethereum 2.0. But, all of us collectively — whether you’re Polkadot or EOS or Tezos or Cardano — we’re trying to say that proof of stake is much better than proof of work, at least the bitcoin flavor of proof of work.”
  • “That trend is going to get really interesting and it’s going to open up a lot of regulatory questions and tax questions about the operation of proof of stake that are distinctly different from proof of work.”

• Movement from replicated to distributed systems: “You’ll have to go from a homogeneous system where everybody’s the same to a heterogeneous system. And you’ll also have to start discussing some uncomfortable truths, like maybe we don’t store everything forever, especially with smart contracts. And this is the year where I think those inconvenient truths are going to translate into progress and then eventually adoption. And once that gets settled, these systems are going to be significantly more competitive than bitcoin or other such things.”

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