# kaal:claim:3125827-021

**Claim.** Successful proof of stake experiments running today cannot be used to infer that their protocols are truly secure, because the current participant population is atypically altruistic; confidence must instead come from sound reasoning about incentives.

**Type.** normative  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- nascent crypto economy dominated by altruists

**Source quote.**

> Therefore we cannot use any successful experiments at this time to infer protocols are truly secure. We must rely on sound reasoning in order to obtain any confidence that our projects will continue to succeed.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *Secure Proof of Stake Protocol* (2018), 2.2 Soft attacks, page 11

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, Secure Proof of Stake Protocol (2018). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3125827

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `598d9bd95e4af7a0a35328677c6bfc069f69f2e32c30c720b3a0be98a23a40cb` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202018%20-%20Secure%20Proof%20of%20Stake%20Protocol.pdf

**Failure mode.** false-inference-from-live-experiments  (family: sample-and-selection-bias)

**Topics.** empirical-evidence, consensus-and-security, research-methods, risk-and-incentives

**Keywords.** altruism-cliff, empirical-inference, protocol-security, methodology, incentive-design

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.