How Does the Economic Security Model of PoS Differ from PoW?

The economic security of Proof of Work (PoW) comes from the high external cost of energy and hardware required to mine, making attacks expensive to execute. In contrast, Proof of Stake (PoS) security is endogenous, derived from the value of the staked crypto assets themselves.

In PoS, an attacker must acquire a massive amount of the native currency to attack the network, and this stake can be destroyed ("slashed") if they act maliciously. This directly links network security to the economic value locked within the network itself.