DPoS Consensus Mechanism: From PoW to PoS to Delegated attestation

The Evolution of Blockchain Consensus Mechanisms

After Bitcoin became popular, everyone realized a problem: PoW (Proof of Work) consumes too much electricity. The energy consumption of mining is equivalent to that of a small country, which is clearly not a long-term solution.

In 2012, Peercoin introduced PoS (Proof of Stake), and the idea was simple: instead of having miners compete in computing power, why not let coin holders directly produce blocks? The more coins you lock, the higher the probability of producing a block, which allows for profit while also deterring bad behavior (since your coins could be confiscated).

Sounds perfect, but reality is harsh: the rich get richer. Large holders have more coins, more opportunities to produce blocks, and earn more rewards. As a result, the power of the entire network gradually concentrates in the hands of a few whales — which is exactly what blockchain aims to avoid.

DPoS is Here: The Revolution of 2014

In 2014, Daniel Larimer created DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) on BitShares. The core logic is clever: instead of directly producing blocks, select a few representatives to produce blocks and then supervise them. It's like a shareholders' meeting electing a board of directors.

Now EOS, Tron, Steem and other chains are using DPoS. Why are they so popular?

How to Play DPoS

Two Roles

Voter: That's you, holding tokens, choosing who will produce the block.

• Voting Weight = Your Token Quantity (The voices of the wealthy carry more weight)
• It is not a one-time vote; you can change your mind at any time (if you dislike a certain representative, you can immediately cancel your vote).
• Many chains will distribute dividends to voters: a portion of the earned rewards will be given to you.

Representative (also known as witness, super representative): the selected block producer

• The number is usually between 21 and 101 (this is the beauty of DPoS: sufficiently decentralized, yet not too chaotic)
• Take turns to produce blocks to ensure stability
• Earn two profits: Block Reward (newly issued tokens) + Transaction Fee
• Good performance can also earn you a performance bonus; if you slack off or act maliciously, the community will directly vote you out.

Taking Tron as an example, super representatives can earn up to 40,000 USD per month. It sounds very tempting, but competing against hundreds of candidates is extremely fierce.

Verification Mechanism

DPoS does not allow representatives to check each other's work like some mechanisms do. Instead, anyone can run a full node, download all Blocks, verify the validity of transactions, and ensure that representatives follow the rules. This creates high transparency, making it impossible for representatives to cheat even if they want to.

Why People Like DPoS

✅ Fast and Efficient: Only a few dozen representatives take turns producing blocks, without having all miners compete for computing power like in PoW, resulting in much faster speeds.

✅ Energy-saving: No crazy mining energy consumption, energy consumption is on the order of one thousandth of PoW.

✅ Power Balance: Although only a few representatives produce blocks, they are elected democratically by the community, not bought with money.

✅ Security is guaranteed: The community can remove representatives who perform poorly or cheat at any time.

But DPoS also has its drawbacks

❌ Risk of Wealthy Control: Although it's a democratic vote, those with more tokens have greater voting power. As a result, it can easily be hijacked by the wealthy.

❌ Centralization Concerns: If only a few representatives hold power steadily, the power will still be concentrated.

❌ Voter Apathy: Imagine that after everyone votes for the class monitor, they just don’t care anymore, and no one supervises the bad representatives. DPoS requires voters to remain active and vigilant, but in reality, many people are too lazy to participate.

DPoS has competitors now

In the past decade, DPoS has not been the only player:

• PoA (Proof of Authority, 2017): VeChain is using
• BPoS (Bonded Proof of Stake, 2019): Choices of Cosmos and Polkadot
• PPoS (Pure Proof of Stake): Algorand is using
• PoS + Sharding: The approach of Ethereum 2.0

The blockchain community has been debating which mechanism is the best: which has the strongest security, the best scalability, and the most decentralization. There is still no conclusion.

Summary

DPoS is an upgraded solution to PoW and early PoS, replacing the brute force competition of computing power with a democratic representation system. It is not perfect, but it has found a decent balance between speed, energy consumption, and power decentralization.

Blockchain technology is still evolving, and DPoS is just a temporary answer. In the future, who wins or loses will depend on which mechanism can truly solve the triangle dilemma of security, scalability, and decentralization.