Pool competition and centralization in PoS blockchain network
Dunzhe Tang, Ping He, Zhongjie Fan, Yujie Wang
Abstract
In Proof-of-Stake (PoS) blockchain network, stakeholders spend tokens for consumption while competing for network transaction fee with unspent tokens. Stakeholders are incentivized to form staking pools to compete with each other, but continued staking pool merge does not occur given fixed pool operating cost. Unlike other blockchain networks and traditional payment systems, token price in PoS blockchain network is a direct result of competition among service providers (staking pools) and is strongly positively correlated with network decentralization level. As an extension, we show that uneven wealth distribution or biased validator selection function enhances stake centralization and sabotage token price.