Skip to main content

How Does the ‘Economic Finality’ of PoS Compare to the ‘Probabilistic Finality’ of PoW?

PoW has 'probabilistic finality,' meaning a transaction is considered final with increasing certainty the more blocks are mined on top of it, but a reversal is always theoretically possible. PoS has 'economic finality,' meaning a transaction is irreversible once a supermajority of staked validators has attested to it.

Reversing it would require an attacker to destroy their own staked capital via slashing, making the attack economically non-viable and effectively final.

What Is ‘Transaction Finality’ and How Does It Differ across Various Blockchain Architectures?
How Does Transaction Finality Differ between Various Consensus Mechanisms?
What Is the Difference between Probabilistic Finality and Absolute Finality?
How Does Transaction Finality Differ between Bitcoin and Ethereum?