Cardano’s Ouroboros Was the First Mover to Proof of Stake

A Twitter thread on June 8 stated how the user is excited about Ethereum’s move to proof-of-stake (PoS), and how this will be the “first step of Proof of Stake becoming a reality.”

Understandably, the majority of the crypto users on Twitter, including Charles Hoskinson, did not agree with this. One user decided to refresh people’s memories about the previous tweet by stating “Cardano was about 4 years faster launching it, despite their academic research, peer review processes and formally verified methodology. Ourboros is the most cited cryptographic research, truly a groundbreaking PoS protocol, unmatched, and far ahead of any other.”

Charles Hoskinson agreed with this statement and added that he does not understand how “this point is totally missed.”

Ouroboros is the consensus protocol for Cardano. It is also the very first “provably secure “proof-of-stake protocol, and the first blockchain protocol based on peer review research. Charles Hoskinson adopted Ouroboros to name the proof-of-stake consensus protocol that underlies Cardano in 2017.

Ouroboros Classic has already reached great milestones, such as being the foundation for an energy-efficient protocol that rivals proof-of-work and introducing a mathematical framework to analyze proof of stake.

Ethereum’s Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain has a well-established record, but a PoS consensus, like Cardano’s Ouroboros, replaces miners with validators.

Ethereum has seen the advantages of PoS and plans to make the transition during the upcoming Merge, but Cardano does have the advantage of being the very first mover in the field.

In other words, Ethereum has some catching up to do and is, indeed, not the first to move to PoS.