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 printed point-in-time calculations that, by his mannequin, put Ethereum first, Solana second and Bitcoin third on a “price to assault” foundation. “Reality cuts by way of all of the noise & the BS narratives, as financial safety may 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 funds” required to compromise a community. For proof-of-work chains, he modeled the price of a 51% assault as a perform of miner revenues from issuance and costs; for proof-of-stake chains, he handled the assault price as a perform 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 maths is the yearly safety funds, inflation + charges divided by the assault threshold (51%). For PoS, the maths is the market capitalization + charges + inflation divided by the staking participation fee & then divided once more by the assault threshold (33%).”
Past the relative rankings, Bons argued the ratio of “safety to market capitalization” is the crucial lens as a result of “the larger the bounty, the larger an attacker could be prepared 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 know-how 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 ‘well-liked 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 primarily based on a special sort 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 rapid pushback and requests for clarification. One commenter requested why, if “PoS gives 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 ‘unsuitable,’ a minimum of in relationship to fact … This may shift as we change into extra educated on crypto.”
In a separate alternate, he predicted Bitcoin’s relative safety would preserve eroding “till the community comes beneath assault,” until price income or utility adjustments the trajectory.
The Bitcoin Safety Finances Debate
The broader debate round Bitcoin’s “safety funds” has intensified this yr as issuance fell once more after the April 2024 halving. In Might, Ethereum researcher Justin Drake warned that Bitcoin’s price 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 neighborhood—facilities on the concept persistently low charges indicate a shrinking funds to discourage 51% assaults over the very long run.
Nonetheless, Bons’ particular methodology is way from settled science. BitMEX Analysis, in a 2024 examination of “financial price to assault” throughout consensus fashions, cautioned that “like for like” comparisons slim the hole significantly, concluding that when assumptions are standardized “the values are extra comparable than many anticipate, with staking programs 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 primarily based in Amsterdam, and his posts routinely problem Bitcoin orthodoxy.
His newest claims—inserting Solana forward of Bitcoin on safety—will probably gas renewed scrutiny of what, exactly, ought to rely as an “assault price” in heterogeneous programs and the way dynamic countermeasures, from slashing and social restoration to consumer variety and price market design, issue into any defensible rating. The one consensus, for now, is that the query of safety—and 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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