Justin Bons, founder and CIO of Amsterdam-based Cyber Capital, ignited a brand new spherical of the proof-of-work versus proof-of-stake debate on Wednesday, asserting that Solana’s “financial safety” now exceeds Bitcoin’s and trails solely Ethereum’s among the many largest networks. In a prolonged X submit on August 13, Bons revealed point-in-time calculations that, by his mannequin, put Ethereum first, Solana second and Bitcoin third on a “value to assault” foundation. “Reality cuts by all of the noise & the BS narratives, as financial safety could be measured objectively!” he wrote, including: “PoS is, the truth is, far more safe than PoW, by a number of orders of magnitude.”
Solana Tops Bitcoin
Bons framed his evaluation round what he calls the annual “safety price range” required to compromise a community. For proof-of-work chains, he modeled the price of a 51% assault as a operate of miner revenues from issuance and costs; for proof-of-stake chains, he handled the assault value as a operate of market capitalization, charges and inflation, adjusted by the share of tokens staked and a 33% assault threshold.
In his snapshot, Bitcoin’s annual financial safety got here out to roughly $9.7 billion—“(0.4%)” of its market cap by his ratio—versus $24.1 billion for Solana “(23%)” and $52.2 billion for Ethereum “(10%).” He posted his working in-line: “For PoW, the mathematics is the yearly safety price range, inflation + charges divided by the assault threshold (51%). For PoS, the mathematics is the market capitalization + charges + inflation divided by the staking participation charge & then divided once more by the assault threshold (33%).”
Past the relative rankings, Bons argued the ratio of “safety to market capitalization” is the important lens as a result of “the larger the bounty, the larger an attacker is perhaps keen to spend.” In that framing, he contends, proof-of-stake advantages disproportionately from rising market worth as a result of assault prices scale with capitalization, whereas proof-of-work depends on an externalized and fluctuating spend on {hardware} and electrical energy mirrored in miner income.
“This additionally clearly exposes PoW as an inferior expertise from a safety perspective,” he wrote, claiming that “even with a lot decrease market capitalization, ETH & SOL beat BTC’s safety proper now, opposite to ‘widespread perception’.”
The CIO additionally assigned zero “financial safety” to networks he describes as permissioned or “Proof of Authority,” explicitly naming XRP, BNB and HBAR. “They’re based mostly on a unique kind of consensus algorithm, PoA … which, in contrast to PoW & PoS, don’t depend on financial safety!” he wrote. That stance reprises prior critiques he has product of XRP’s governance and validator mannequin.
Bons’ thread drew instant pushback and requests for clarification. One commenter requested why, if “PoS provides larger safety at decrease financial drain,” the market’s dominant narrative nonetheless treats Bitcoin because the most secure asset. Bons replied: “Spot on! The vast majority of the market is ‘fallacious,’ no less than in relationship to reality … It will shift as we turn into extra educated on crypto.”
In a separate change, he predicted Bitcoin’s relative safety would preserve eroding “till the community comes below assault,” until charge income or utility modifications the trajectory.
The Bitcoin Safety Funds Debate
The broader debate round Bitcoin’s “safety price range” has intensified this yr as issuance fell once more after the April 2024 halving. In Might, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned that Bitcoin’s charge market stays too small to switch declining subsidies, calling proof-of-work “a ticking time bomb” and noting charges had slipped to multi-year lows. His argument—disputed by many within the Bitcoin group—facilities on the concept that persistently low charges suggest a shrinking price range to discourage 51% assaults over the very long run.
Nonetheless, Bons’ particular methodology is much from settled science. BitMEX Analysis, in a 2024 examination of “financial value to assault” throughout consensus fashions, cautioned that “like for like” comparisons slender the hole significantly, concluding that when assumptions are standardized “the values are extra related than many anticipate, with staking techniques solely barely costlier to assault.”
Critics additionally object to treating market capitalization as spendable assault capital, arguing that purchasing a controlling stake would push costs up and that liquidity, borrowability and governance responses complicate any static mannequin. “Financial safety” formulation that “plug market cap” immediately have been referred to as overly simplistic in replies to Bons’ thread.
Bons is a long-time proof-of-stake advocate whose agency describes itself as “Europe’s oldest cryptocurrency fund,” based in 2016 and based mostly in Amsterdam, and his posts routinely problem Bitcoin orthodoxy.
His newest claims—inserting Solana forward of Bitcoin on safety—will doubtless gasoline renewed scrutiny of what, exactly, ought to depend as an “assault value” in heterogeneous techniques and the way dynamic countermeasures, from slashing and social restoration to shopper variety and charge market design, issue into any defensible rating. The one consensus, for now, is that the query of safety—and find out how to measure it—stays as contested as ever.
At press time, the Solana token traded at $201.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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