Vitalik Buterin himself stated that PoS will make Ethereum more secure than BTC.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, also known as "V God," recently stated that implementing the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm in the Ethereum blockchain will make it more secure and valuable compared to Bitcoin (BTC).

Buterin expressed this view at the Ethereum developers conference Devcon 5 in Osaka from 10/8-11. He specifically pointed out:

After transitioning to PoS, the cost of potential attacks increases, making Ethereum a more secure network.

Perhaps some just want to see the blockchain burn?

Buterin first talked about Bitcoin in his speech, paying homage to Satoshi Nakamoto and noting that he created cryptoeconomics to incentivize people to maintain the network.

The design of the system ensures that attackers would need to spend a large amount of funds to successfully disrupt the blockchain. However, Buterin claimed that this architecture has inherent issues, explaining:

What if an attacker has massive additional protocol incentives or just wants to watch the world burn? Maybe it's a government. Or a hacker looking for a thrill. The issue here is that we have assumed that our participants are economically incentivized, but what if some people just want to watch the world burn?

Ethereum's Security Based on Staking

Implemented through Ethereum's PoS upgrade, users can lock their Ether in smart contracts to allow them to validate new blocks without the need for heavy computational power and electricity input as in PoW systems. If users misbehave, their stakes will be slashed.

The more Ether staked, the higher the likelihood of eventually validating a block. Just as a miner with a higher hash rate has a higher chance of mining a block. In Buterin's envisioned PoS system, validators need a period of time after creating a new block during which the block may be challenged and potentially proven to contain illegal data.

Moreover, Buterin believes that a successful attack on the network would require validating multiple malicious blocks, which in turn would require a significant amount of Ethereum stake, which can be drastically slashed if someone attempts to challenge transactions successfully. He stated:

This makes executing potential attacks more costly and is our improvement over PoW.

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