Kevin Sekniqi, Daniel Laine, Stephen Buttolph, and Emin Gun Sirer versus Sybil control mechanisms. We note that the choice of consensus protocols is, for the most part, orthogonal to the choice of the Sybil control mechanism. This is not to say that Sybil control mechanisms are drop-in-replacements for each other, since a particular choice might have implications about the underlying guarantees of the consensus protocol. However, the Snow* family can be coupled with many of these known

Ultimately, for security and to ensure that the incentives of participants are aligned for the benet of the network, $AVAX choose PoS to the core Sybil control mechanism. Some forms of stake are inherently centralized: mining rig manufacturing (PoW), for instance, is inherently centralized in the hands of a few people with the appropriate know-how and access to the dozens of patents required for competitive VLSI manufacturing. Furthermore, PoW mining leaks value due to the large yearly miner subsidies. Similarly, disk space is most abundantly owned by large datacenter operators.Further, all sybil control mechanisms that accrue ongoing costs, e.g. electricity costs for hashing, leak value out of the ecosystem, not to mention destroy the environment. This, in turn, reduces the feasibility envelope for the token, wherein an adverse price move over a small time frame can render the system inoperable. Proof-of-work inherently selects for

Among these options, we choose proof-of-stake, because it is green, accessible, and open to all. We note, however, that while the $AVAX uses PoS, the Avalanche network enables subnets to be launched with PoW and PoS. Staking is a natural mechanism for participation in an open network because it enables a direct economic argument: the probability of success of an attack is directly proportional to a well-dened monetary cost function. In other words, the nodes that stake are economically motivated to not engage in behavior that might hurt the value of their stake. Additionally, this stake does not incur any additional upkeep costs (other then the opportunity cost of investing in another asset), and has the property that, unlike mining equipment,

For PoW operations, mining equipment can be simply reused or if the owner decides to entirely sold back to the market. A node wishing to enter the network can freely do so by rst putting up a stake that is immobilized during the duration of participation in the network. The user determines the amount duration of the stake. Once accepted, a stake cannot be reverted. The main goal is to ensure that nodes substantially share the same mostly stable view of the network. We anticipate setting the minimum staking time on the order of a